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SOME 
MEMORY DAYS 



Some Memory Days 

of the Church 

in America 



is 



By 



S. ALICE RANLETT 



Milwaukee: 
The Young Churchman Co. 

London: 
A. R. Mowbray & Co. 



■ \ ! • 






Copyright, 1911, 

by 

THE YOUNG CHURCHMAN CO. 



Reprinted, 

in considerable part, from 

The Young Christian Soldier. 



©CLA292387 



CONTENTS 

I. — The Earliest of All 1 

II. — History of the Found ation 10 

III.— In Virginia 16 

IV. — In Maine and Xew Hampshire 32 

V. — In Massachusetts 42 

VI. — Other Beginnings 48 

VII. — In the South 54 

VIII. — A Group of Early Missionaries .... 64 

IX. — The Church and the Nation 72 

X. — The First Bishops 81 

XI.— The Advance 92 

XII. — The Missionary Church 106 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Pocahontas Saving the Life of Captain John 

Smith Frontispiece 

Bas-Relief Memorial of Robert Hunt's First 
Celebration of Holy Communion, James- 
town, Va 20-21 * 

Captain John Smith and Pocahontas . . . 24-25 

Ruins of Jamestown (Va.) Tower .... 30-31 

Rev. John Wesley 68-69 - 

An Historic Font 72-73 

Bishop Seabury . 84-85 

Bishop Seabury's Mitre 86-87 

Bishop William White 90-91 

Bishop Hobart 92-93 

Bishop Philander Chase 94-95 

Bishop Kemper 102-103 

Rev. James Lloyd Breck 102-103 

Bishop George Washington Doane . . . 108-109 •* 

Bishop Channing Moore Williams .... 110-111 

Bishop Boone, Sr . . 110-111 



The Earliest of All. 

Whex we look at an old oak-tree with massive 
trunk, spreading branches, and glory of graceful, 
deep-lobed leaves, pink-flushed in spring, shining 
green in summer, and glowing crimson in autumn, 
if we are thinking folk, we are likely to ask, "Where 
did this noble tree come from?" and to wonder, as 
we answer ourselves: "From a tiny golden-brown 
acorn that fell from an older tree." And then we 
think how that tree came from yet an older, and so 
on, back to the long ago birthday of oak-trees and 
other trees, when God, creating, said, "Let the earth 
bring forth the fruit-tree, yielding fruit after his 
kind." And we look again at our grand forest-tree. 
and, marvelling, think how one small acorn holds in 
its dainty cup the "possibility of not only one oak- 
tree, but of oak-trees to the thousandth generation, 
indeed, of oak-trees without end." 

In some such way, when we consider the beauty 
and strength of Christ's Church in this dear land of 



2 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

ours, and look backward to learn how she has come 
fco this estate, we find that she has grown from grace 
to grace out of the seed of God's creation carried from 
land to land and nourished by His servants of many 
ages; and we learn that about three hundred years 
ago this seed was brought to this country by our 
forefathers from the old home of the Church in 
England, where for nearly sixteen centuries she had 
been giving her fruit for the healing of men's souls. 

To England, also across the sea, the seed of the 
Church was carried, probably in the days when St. 
Paul, the Missionary to the West, was a prisoner in 
Eome, chained to two soldiers whose fellow-soldiers 
were fighting for the Roman Emperor in heathen 
Britain. Perhaps St. Paul's fellow-prisoners were 
nobles brought in chains from that same Britain to 
Eome, there to become the freemen of the Lord, and 
to carry news of Him to their own people. Then, if 
we still look backward, we shall keep, with St. Paul, 
St. Peter, St. John, and the Apostolic Church of all 
lands, for the first great memory day of our Ameri- 
can Church, her Birthday, when, in the upper cham- 
ber at Jerusalem, life and power came to her at 
Pentecost by the might of the Holy Spirit. 

There are many great memory days of the Church 
in other lands that we should gladly think of with 
honor, but we must not linger for these, until we 
come to the time when our English forefathers, sail- 
ing to discover unknown lands, carried with them 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 3 

across the stormy ocean the seed of the Church 
which for ages had been the Mother Church of their 
people and ours. 

When, on St. John's Day in 14ST, John Cabot, 
coming upon the Labrador coast, discovered for the 
world the continent of America, he carried with him 
in his English ship some minister of the English 
Church (un-reformed) ; and when he planted on the 
barren shore the banner of England, almost certainly 
the prayers of the Church were said for the first time 
in America. And when John's son, Sebastian Cabot, 
in the reign of the young Edward VI., sailed in 
1553 to "discover places unknown," with him went 
Master Eichard Stafford, minister of the Church of 
England, who daily read Morning and Evening 
Prayer, and the other Church services which were 
"strictly enjoined." "In the name and fear of God, 
the explorers put forth on the unknown seas, carry- 
ing with them the Body and Blood of Christ as their 
viaticum," and the last home words that they heard 
were the prayers of the Church. "The cross with the 
arms of England marked their discoveries, and on 
their way, north to the ice, south to the boundaries 
of the globe, and west to the broad rivers and inland 
seas of the Xew World, the prayers of the English 
Church were said daily"; and the old log-books and 
charters mention the desire of the sailors to carry 
the Word of God to these "very mighty, vast 
countries." 






4 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

There are many great memory days of our Church 
in the years when the national life of England was 
in full vigor, with Queen Elizabeth on the throne, 
gathering about her great men of thought and action, 
sailors and soldiers, statesmen, poets, philosophers, 
discoverers, and Churchmen. The world of things 
and the world of thought were growing fast; Colum- 
bus, iVmerigo Vespucci, and the Cabots had found a 
way to the new continent, and with the love for ad- 
venture and desire for gold and also for new things, 
the love of country and queen and the love of the 
Church and her Holy King, urged Englishmen to 
found English colonies in the New World. 

Among the stirring spirits of the time was Cap- 
tain Martin Frobisher, who, firmly believing in a 
short passage to China, determined to go himself, 
"and make full proof thereof'; and who, sailing on 
his first voyage, in 1596, pushed on amid "cruel 
storms of snow and haile, great islands of yce, and 
mighty deere which ran at him so that hardly he 
escaped with his life." 

But it is in a later voyage of the brave Frobisher 
that we find a Church memory day, for this time 
there sailed with him Master Wolfall, "the first mis- 
sionary priest of the English Church to America, 
a learned man, appointed by her Majesty's council 
to be their minister and preacher, who, being well 
seated in his own country, with a good living," left 
home and family to "take in hand this painful voy- 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 5 

age for the only care he had to save soules to Chris- 
tianity. " The voyage was full of perils; the ships 
sometimes struck "great rocks of yce like mighty 
mountains, from whose melting tops poured down 
streams able to drive a mill," and the "brunt of these 
so great and extreme dangers overcame the poore 
mariners" ; but, in August, they reached their "former 
harbor/' probably in Labrador, and "highly praised 
God and, upon their knees, gave Him due, humble 
and heartie thanks." And there, among the ice fields 
far to the north, on the eastern coast of America, on 
a Church memory day, was God first worshipped in 
America in the Holy Communion according to the 
Church of England; for Master Wolf all "celebrated 
a communion at the partaking whereof was the cap- 
tain and many other soldiers, mariners, and miners. 
This celebration of the Divine Mystery was the first 
signe, seale, and confirmation of Christ's Xame, 
death, and passion ever known in these quarters."' 

While Frobisher, with Master Wolfall, was skirt- 
ing the Labrador coast, another brave Englishman, 
Sir Francis Drake, had gone far south, passed 
through the straits of Magellan, and sailing north 
along the western coast, discovered the country which 
is now California and Oregon, and on that memory 
day of the Church which is the Eve of the Day of St. 
John Baptist, 1579, Drake in his ship, the Pelican, 
sailed into a "faire goode baye," probably San Fran- 
cisco Bay, and called his company together for 



6 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

prayers. The wondering Indians brought presents, 
bunches of black feathers, rush baskets filled with 
tobacco, quivers of arrows, and furs, which the ad- 
miral took, and gave back clothing and linen. But 
when he saw that the poor people looked on the Eng- 
lish as gods, he with his company fell to prayers, and 
lifted up eyes and hands to heaven, to show that the 
God who should be worshipped is above ; and Francis 
Fletcher, the chaplain, prayed God to open the sav- 
ages' blinded eyes "that they might be called to the 
knowledge of Him, the true God, and Jesus Christ, 
the Salvation of the Gentiles." 

During the prayers, reading the Bible, and sing- 
ing the Psalms, the Indians sat attentive and as if 
taking pleasure, and often afterward asked for the 
prayers and singing. When they showed their "grief s 
and aches," the English treated these with salves 
and lotions, "beseeching God to give cure to their dis- 
eases by these means." Then a great company came, 
escorting the Indian king with a bodyguard of a hun- 
dred tall savages, and with solemn dances and sing- 
ing they offered their crown and sceptre to the Eng- 
lish. These Drake took, wishing that people so tract- 
able and loving might, by the "preaching of the Gos- 
pel, be brought to the knowledge of the true and ever- 
lasting God." 

Drake called the country Albion, with a loving 
thought of his home country, and because of the white 
cliffs ; and he set up there a monument claiming the 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 7 

land for England; and Admiral Drake's chaplain, 
Francis Fletcher, has the honor of being the first of 
the English Church to minister the Word and Sacra- 
ments in the territory of the United States. Per- 
haps, when, on that St. John Baptist's Day so long- 
ago, he said the Collect of the Church, he hoped that 
he, too, by "God's Providence," had been sent to that 
far-off Pacific shore to "prepare the way of God's 
Son our Saviour." In some way, perhaps, he did 
such preparing, and he and his companions seem to 
have shown a gentle spirit of love to the natives, for 
these, when they saw the English making ready to 
depart, burst into "sighs and sorrowings and woful 
complaints and moans and bitter tears" ; but, finally, 
when Drake's company "fell to prayers and singing 
of Psalms," the Indians became calm and also "fell 
a-lifting of their eyes and hands to heaven," like the 
white men. Then from the hill-tops they watched 
the sailing ships and were left alone on the Pacific 
shore, perhaps dimly understanding that the Great 
Spirit had sent messengers to teach them of Himself, 
and doubtless looking forward to the coming again 
of these white-faced messengers. Poor, simple souls, 
joining, for a few summer days, in will at least, in 
the worship of the Church, and lifting up their eyes 
to God ! May we not believe that even so they were 
better prepared to meet the next messengers, whether 
men or angels, whom God should send to them, His 
untaught children of the far Western land, for whom 



8 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

more than three centuries ago the prayers of the 
Church were said into the listening ear of God? 

One of the first of the noble discoverers of Amer- 
ica — the first he is called to "erect an habitation and 
government in these countreys" — was the gallant Sir 
Humphrey Gilbert, who, in 1578 and again in 1583, 
endeavoring to settle in America men of the English 
nation and English Church, said he was urged in 
this by the honor of God and by compassion for the 
poor natives "whom it seemed God had designed to 
be redeemed by Christianity by the English." In- 
stead of seeking to acquire great wealth for himself, 
Gilbert wished to help his countrymen and to 
carry God's Word into the very "mighty and vast 
countreys." He sacrificed his own fortune to equip 
his little fleet of five small barques, with which he 
sailed across the Atlantic. Landing in Xewfound- 
land, he took possession of the island for England 
and provided for the care of the settlement by the 
Church. The storms and dangers of the coast terri- 
fied many of his men, who deserted him; but, com- 
manding himself the little barque Squirrel, with two 
other vessels, he sailed southward, seeking other land- 
ing-places, till the "outrageous" seas and storms over- 
came his frail barque. But these could not overcome 
the courage and faith of her captain, who, just be- 
fore the vessel sank, on the Tenth Sunday after 
Trinity, 1583, was seen sitting aloft with a book, 
and cheering his men, calling to them, "We are as 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 9 

near to heaven by sea as by land." So Sir Humphrey 
was one of the brave men who began to bring the seed 
of the Church to our land, and when, on a certain 
summer Sunday which is one of our memory days, 
we, throughout this great country, pray God to "make 
us ask such things as shall please Him," we may be 
sure that the noble Gilbert's holy longings and prayers 
were for just such things, and that through them 
blessings have come to the Church in this western 
land where he strove to plant the old Faith. 

With another English explorer, Sir Richard Gren- 
ville, in 1585, sailed the honored Master Hariot, 
scholar and historian, who in each place to which they 
came "set forth the Bible and the knowledge of the 
true God, that the Indians might be made partakers 
of His truth." A man of prayer himself, by example 
and by teaching he impressed the poor savages with 
some sense of the value of prayer, and, in their simple 
way, they tried to show their reverence for the Bible 
and their hungry desire to know its contents by strok- 
ing and kissing the Book. 

As we think of these memory days when, in the 
first English ships that came to this land came the 
seed of the Church and the Word of God, may we 
not believe that some souls of the forest people in 
those old times are also keeping them as glad memory 
days in the Church Unseen, and praising the Lord 
whom thev there learned to know? 



II. 

Helpers of the Foundation. 

Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the "soldier resolute 
in Jesus Christ," as he was called, went down into the 
raging waves in the "great torment of weather," but 
the cause of the Church in America was not wrecked, 
and Gilbert's attempt to plant Christian inhabitants 
there led to great things, for Edward Hayes, a Chris- 
tian gentleman of Gilbert's company, "continued to 
the end, and by God's assistance returned home" to 
write a thrilling account of his voyage. He reminded 
Englishmen that Gilbert's failure but proved that 
"little by little men were to be won to the truth, and 
that they ought to be prepared to execute God's will, 
when the due time should come to call the pagan 
Americans to Christianity"; and he begged men to 
go to the New World with virtuous motives, chiefly 
the honor of God and the help that they could give, 
for it seemed that God had reserved North America 
to be reduced to Christianity by the English nation. 

Mr. Hayes also wrote a winsome account of the 
lands visited, of the harmless Indians, the rich and 
varied products of sea and land, the incredible quan- 



OF THE CHURCH IX AMERICA 11 

tity of trout, salmon, and cod, whales, and delicious 
turbot, lobsters, and oysters having pearls. He de- 
scribed the vast forests of firs, pines, and cypresses, 
to supply tar, pitch, boards, and masts ; he mentioned 
the wild roses "passing sweet" and the rich grass 
"which fats sheep in a short space," and the peas 
sown by the English, the "first fruits of industry in 
the far land"; and he wrote of partridges, falcons, 
and canary-birds, of red deer, buffaloes, bears, wolves, 
foxes, beavers, martins, and sables with choice fur, 
and of many "other creatures which led the English 
explorers to glorify God, who filled the earth with 
animals for the use of man." So Gilbert's discov- 
eries and efforts to possess America for God aroused 
other Englishmen to take up the task that dropped 
from his hand. 

Sir Walter Raleigh, a favorite of Queen Elizabeth, 
whose attention our history students will remember 
he won by throwing his velvet cloak into the mud to 
be a mat for her feet, was deeply interested in 
America and fitted out the expedition which resulted 
in the settlement of Eoanoke Island, on the coast 
of North Carolina. Here, on August 18, 1587, was 
born Virginia Dare, the granddaughter of the col- 
ony^ s Governor, and the first-born American child 
of English parents upon whose brow fell the glisten- 
ing drops of water in baptism, while the words of 
the English Prayer Book declared that she was re- 
ceived "into the congregation of Christ's flock." 



12 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

The little Virginia came to a home whose people 
were already suffering hunger in their brave effort 
to build an English America; and when she was a 
wee baby her grandfather, the Governor, was obliged 
to go to England for assistance. When he returned 
to Eoanoke Island he found grass growing in the 
deserted block-house, and fragments of his own books 
and pictures scattered over the ground, but not a 
living soul on the island. He never again heard from 
his loved ones, except that, years afterwards, some 
Indians declared that, from a general massacre of 
English who came from an island, a young white 
girl had been saved and was living with the savages ; 
and to this clay some believe that this white girl 
was the little Virginia Dare, and that her grand- 
children in some degree are among the half-breeds 
of North Carolina. So it is possible that, when our 
American Church is teaching the Indians of the 
South, she may be leading back to the Faith some 
descendant of the first child of the Church born in 
North America. 

Among those who did noble service in planting 
the Church in America were some who themselves 
never sailed across the ocean to the New World; for 
in the time of Queen Bess, as now, the pen of a think- 
ing man was a mighty weapon and inspired people 
to great deeds. Especially let us honor one of these 
men who vigorously and lovingly helped us on our 
way to our Nation and our Church. His name is 



OF THE CHURCH IX AMERICA 13 

Richard Hakluyt, and lie was a schoolboy in West- 
minster School, London, when, one day in the year 
1568, he went into a quiet room in the Temple, where 
his cousin, an older Richard Hakluyt, sat dreaming 
over the maps of the Western world, new and wonder- 
ful in that time. The older man opened the Bible, 
and pointed to those verses which declare that "they 
that go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their 
business in great waters ; these men see the works of 
the Lord, and His wonders in the deep"; then he 
called the boy's attention to the fascinating maps. 

This incident determined the young Richard's 
career, and, as it led to his having an important share 
in planting England in America, it made that day in 
1568 a memory day for us. For the boy, after years 
of study at Oxford, became the chaplain of the Eng- 
lish Embassy in Paris, and later one of the clergy 
of Westminster, in whose great abbey he was buried 
with high honors; and, while his life was spent in 
the service of the Church of England, it was also 
spent in the service of the yet implanted Church in 
America. Richard Hakluyt, with practical common 
sense, high wisdom, and great faith in, and hope for, 
things yet to be, became the wisest man of his age 
in the wonderful, new, ever-growing geography of the 
time, and the Englishman who knew the very most 
about all matters relating to the Xew World. His 
book, called Principal Voyages, full of poetry and 
thrilling in interest, contains the exciting accounts 



14 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

of the bold journeys of Frobisher, Drake, Gilbert, 
and the other sailor-kings of Elizabeth's day; and its 
stirring, inspiring tales roused many to sail away to 
the great mysterious Western land. 

Also, at the request of Ealeigh, and especially to 
arouse the Queen's interest in the new country, Hak- 
luyt wrote his famous Discourse of Western Planting, 
in which in his quaint way he sets forth many sound 
reasons for the planting of colonies by England in 
North America, declaring that a Virginia was the 
door that God had opened/' and that "this Western 
discoverie will be greatly for the enlargement of the 
Gospel of Christ." "It remaineth," he writes, "to be 
thoroughly weighed by what means and by whom this 
truest Christian work may be performed and multi- 
tudes of simple people be led into the way of their 
salvation. Preachers should be sent by those who 
have taken on themselves the defence of the Faith, 
and this ought to be their chief work. The way to 
send help is to plant colonies and learn the language 
of the people, and instil into their minds the sweet 
liquor of the Gospel, not thinking of gaining filthy 
lucre, but gaining the souls of millions of wretched 
people. The people of America cry out to us, their 
next neighbors, to come and help them, and unto 
those who shall do this worthy work God shall give 
of His riches." 

While the wise Hakluyt and others were thus 
writing and teaching to help on the planting of the 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 15 

Western land, the naval heroes, Drake, Hawkins, Fro- 
bisher, and Howard, and the keen statesmen, Bur- 
leigh and Walsingham, were working together, and 
"behind them the wayward, wilful, but always brave 
and patriotic Queen Elizabeth"; and close at hand 
was an event which, under God's guidance, was to 
make safe and sure the planting of England and the 
Church in the New World. 

In the summer of 1588 came that event the story 
of which we read even now breathless with excite- 
ment. Up the English Channel sailed one hundred 
and thirty black ships-of-war from Spain, with three 
thousand cannon and thirty thousand men, and car- 
rying ninety executioners with racks and thumb- 
screws, to set up the Inquisition on English soil. We 
know the thrilling story, how "the intelligence of 
English freemen fought against mediaeval chivalry"; 
how, with a frightful loss of ships and men, the great 
Armada was destroyed, and how the English sea- 
kings pursued their victories until England ruled 
the sea, and so was free to plant her colonies in 
America and leave them there in safety, for colonies 
cannot live if the line is cut between them and the 
mother country. 

So the day of the defeat of the great Armada is 
one of our memory days, since this was the event 
in the glorious history of England that made it pos- 
sible for her people and her Church to be planted in 
North America. 



III. 

In Virginia. 

When, by the defeat of the Armada, the ocean 
road was quite safe for England, Englishmen of the 
highest character and intelligence hastened to make 
the best use of it by sending over its broad water- 
way new companies of colonists to America. Espe- 
cially, Sir Walter Ealeigh never forgot Virginia, and 
though his efforts to make an English settlement 
there had exhausted his fortunes, and troubles and 
imprisonment in the grim tower of London came to 
him, still his zealous labor kept alive the interest in 
Virginia. In 1606, one of his friends, a stout sailor, 
Capt. Christopher Newport by name, was placed in 
command of an expedition which set sail in three 
vessels, the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the 
Discovery, on New Year's Day, 1607, three hundred 
and four years ago our very latest New Year's Day. 
A true memory day for our nation and our Church 
that was, marking the beginning of wonderful new 
years for the Mother Old World and its daughter- 
land, America. 

As the colonists sailed away from England, a 



OF THE CHURCH IX AMERICA 17 

farewell was wafted to them in the verses of the 
poet laureate, Michael Drayton, who sang: 

"You have heroic minds. 
Worthy your country's name. 
That honor still pursue; 
Go and subdue. 

"And cheerfully at sea 
Success you still entice 
To get the pearl and gold, 
And ours to hold 
Virginia, 
Earth's very paradise! 
In kenning of the shore. 
Be thanks to God first given." 

The colonists carried, for their help in the new 
land, careful instructions, supposed to have been 
written by the wise Hakluyt. They were advised to 
choose a strong, wholesome, and fertile place for their 
settlement; to take great care not to offend the na- 
tives; to "make themselves all of one mind for the 
good of their country*; and to "serve and fear God, 
the giver of all goodness; for every plantation which 
our Heavenly Father doth not plant shall be rooted 
out." 

After a long and trying voyage, on April 26, 
1607, two years before the French settled Canada, 
and thirteeen years before the Pilgrim Mayflower 
sailed into Plymouth harbor, the three little vessels 
with their precious freight, the seed of the Church, 
came to the American shore at Cape Henry, Vir- 



18 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

ginia. Taking shelter from a storm in Hampton 
Roads, the colonists named its promontory Point 
Comfort, and, sailing up the broad river, they chose 
a place for their settlement on a little peninsula, 
where they landed, May 13, 1607. A glorious mem- 
ory day this, for the triangular fort at once built by 
the Englishmen was that which was called Fort 
James for their king, and soon the settlement was 
known as Jamestown, that sacred place where "first 
the Old World permanently touched the New, where 
the white man first met the redskin for civilization, 
and where the English cut the first tree for the first 
log-cabin. Here was the first capital of our empire 
of states; here was the first foundation of a nation 
of freemen; here was the first successful planting of 
the English and the English Church in the New 
World, the garden of our infancy in the West; and 
here the English race first came into possession of 
their portion of the New World and began to shape 
the destiny of this continent/' for the men who 
settled Jamestown brought with them English lib- 
erty and the English Church. 

Among the leaders of the colony were men chiv- 
alrous and pious, longing to enlarge the realms of 
their king and the bounds of the Kingdom of God; 
and valiant soldiers, and men of gentle breeding 
and spiritual enthusiasm and devotion, of whom 
Hakluyt wrote: "If gentle polishing will not serve 
to bring the Indians of Virginia to civil causes, our 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 19 

old, war-trained soldiers will be hammers to prepare 
them for the preacher's hands." 

In the Letters under which the colony was sent, 
we read of the desire for the "furtherance of a work 
which may tend to the glory of God's Divine Majes- 
ty, by bringing the savages to knowledge of Him"; 
and the instructions directed that they should with 
all diligence provide that the "true word and service 
of the Christian Faith according to the religion of 
the Church of England should be preached and used 
not only in the plantations, but also among the 



The men who founded Virginia were men loyal 
to England and the Church. Belonging to no party 
and having no grievances, but coming in full sym- 
pathy with all that was best behind them, they built 
a noble new establishment upon the old foundation. 
Thus the "Mother of States" was by God's grace 
planted with the precious seed of the old Church, 
brought across the ocean in the brave little pioneer 
ships, Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery. 

Prominent among the Jamestown colonists were 
Master Edward Wingfield, the Honorable George 
Percy, Captain John Smith: and there were other 
men, with the "boys," Nat Peacock and Dick Mut- 
ton; and in their midst moved that man of God, 
the Eev. Eobert Hunt, whose courage, wise counsel, 
self-sacrifice, and devotion often made peace in times 
of disagreement. With patient meekness he dis- 



20 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

armed all opposition, and his cheerful faith main- 
tained the sinking spirits of his flock; and "when, 
in a fire in the rising town, he lost his library and 
everything that he had, no one heard him murmur." 

On the day after the landing, a sail was spread 
over the heads of the people, and a board was nailed 
between two trees for a reading-desk, and there, in 
the flickering sunshine and shadows of the forest, 
with the wondering Indians lurking in the back- 
ground, and men armed with blunderbusses guard- 
ing the congregation, the colonists knelt with their 
devoted j^astor (the first English pastor in America), 
to offer God the "sacrifice of praise and thanksgiv- 
ing," and to receive the Body and Blood of the Lord 
Jesus Christ. As they prayed in the Psalms of that 
fourteenth day, we may think of their strong faith 
when they spoke the words : "In Thee, Lord, have 
I put my trust. Thou art my house of defence. I 
will go forth in the strength of the Lord God, and 
will make mention of Thy righteousness only." And 
we may be sure that their hearts beat high with 
hope, as they read on: "His dominion shall be also 
from the one sea to the other, and from the flood 
unto the world's end. They that dwell in the wilder- 
ness shall kneel before Him. . . . All the heathen 
shall praise Him. And all the earth shall be filled 
with His Majesty." 

The first building that these English Churchmen 
put up, after their fort, was a small log church, the 




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k — 

p ^ 

i-a 

pi 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 21 

mother church of America, which was burned by the 
Indians, but replaced in 1619 by a second, and that 
by a third and larger structure. The tower which, 
half-ruined, still stands at Jamestown, may be a part 
of the second church; its form shows that once 
sentries, watching for Indians, patrolled its roof, and 
that soldiers used its loop-holes for the defence of 
the town. 

Although the colonists landed in the sunshine 
and among the bright flowers of May, they had as 
hard a time as the Pilgrims, who, thirteen years 
later, landed amid the snows of a Xew England win- 
ter. The impure river-water which they drank 
caused violent sickness; and there were attacks by 
the Indians, and "starving times" when food nearly 
failed, and the day's allowance for each consisted of 
a half-pint of boiled wheat and the same of barley, 
all spoiled from being twenty-six weeks in the ship's 
hold. To the unwholesome food and water were 
added hard and unfamiliar labor, the frightful sum- 
mer heat, and "fevers lurking in the air." One of 
the men wrote, "There were never Englishmen left 
in a foreign country in such misery as we in this 
new-discovered Virginia. If it had not pleased God 
to put a terror in the savages' hearts, we had all 
perished; men were groaning in every corner of the 
fort, most pitiful to hear." 

Only Captain John Smith's keen, alert activity 
in trading with the Indians for corn saved the col- 



22 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

ony from actual starvation. How eagerly the look- 
out must have watched for his small, active figure 
coming out of the shadowy forest, accompanied by 
Indians bringing baskets of golden maize ! 

Captain Smith was a born leader of men, a rigid 
disciplinarian and of a noble nature. He believed 
that men were made to help each other, and justice 
was his guide; hating sloth, pride, and baseness, he 
would send his soldiers into no dangers where he 
would not lead them; he would starve rather than 
not pay; he hated falsehood more than death, and 
it is believed that, but for his superb courage and 
ability, the Jamestown colony would have perished, 
like that of Eoanoke Island. 

It was on one of these corn-hunting trips that 
Captain Smith was taken prisoner and carried into 
the long wigwam of the chief called Powhatan, who 
sat as judge, dressed in a robe of raccoon skins with 
the tails still hanging from them. Beside him were 
his squaws, with faces painted bright red and chains 
of white shell-beads about their necks; and in front 
of these stood a line of grim warriors, ready with 
clubs to dash out the brains of the prisoner, who was 
already thrown down upon a great stone, when the 
chiefs thirteen-year-old daughter, Pocahontas, 
rushed up and threw herself upon Captain Smith, 
protecting him, and inducing her father to spare his 
life. Now this day of the rescue of Captain Smith, 
January 5, 1608, is one of our memory days, for on 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 23 

it began the friendly interest of the Indian girl, and 
her visits to the Jamestown colony which her kind 
services more than once saved from destruction, as 
we shall see later. 

While Captain Smith was securing corn from the 
Indians for the hungry colony, Captain Newport was 
sailing back and forth between England and Amer- 
ica, bringing new supplies of men and provisions. 
In the second supply, in September, 1608, came the 
first English women who dared go to the great west- 
ern wilderness, a Mrs. Forrest, and her maid, Anne 
Burroughs, who soon married John Laydon, and 
whose marriage in Jamestown church, in December, 
1608, was the first English Church wedding in 
America. 

Many of the settlers were gentlemen quite unac- 
customed to manual labor, but their will was good, 
and the old records tell us how they cut down trees 
and made boards, and how the axe blistered their 
tender fingers, yet how thirty of these gentlemen 
would do more in a day than a hundred of the less 
willing "rest." But they did not find, as they had 
expected, golden pans and kettles in the Indians' 
wigwams, nor big pearls upon the river shore; and 
there were attacks by the Indians, and another starv- 
ing time when famine was warded off by the young 
Pocahontas, who brought corn and venison, and 
again saved Captain Smith for the colony. This 
time the gentle Indian princess, with love for the 



24 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

white men, came "in a dark night, through the irk- 
some woods/' and warned Captain Smith that the 
treacherous Indians were planning an attack, and 
"bade him begone." When they wished her to take 
as a reward anything that she liked, with tears run- 
ning down her cheeks she refused everything. At a 
later day Pocahontas was held in Jamestown as a 
pledge for Powhatan's good behavior, and there she 
was converted to Christianity, and baptized, receiv- 
ing the name of Eebekah, in Jamestown church, 
in April, 1614, before a great friendly gathering of 
white men and Indians. Here, also, she married 
an English husband, John Eolfe, so here are two 
memory days for us, commemorating the first bap- 
tism of an Indian in English America, and the first 
Christian marriage of a white man and an Indian 
in the territory of the United States. 

The bride, who is said to have been a handsome, 
dignified young woman, went to England, and was 
received with much honor as a princess, and called 
the Lady Eebekah; but the child of the forest sick- 
ened and died in the foreign land, and was buried 
in the church at Gravesend. She left one son, 
Thomas Eolfe, who was educated in England, but 
who, years afterwards, went back to Virginia to be- 
come the ancestor of many Virginia families, faith- 
ful to the old Church which led their noble fore- 
mother from darkness into light. How little Poca- 
hontas' Indian people understood of God who is 




< 



z 




V2 



< 



OF THE CHURCH IX AMERICA 25 

Spirit, we may see by the mission given by Pow- 
hatan to Toinoconio, a chief who went in Pocahontas' 
company to England, and who was commanded to 
"observe carefully the King and Queen and God," 
and to report his observations to Powhatan. Poor 
Tomocomo could never understand why no one 
among all the surprisingly many people in England 
would ever take him to God's wigwam and let him 
look at God. 

In the spring of 1609, twenty houses had been 
built at Jamestown, a well of pure water dug in the 
fort, thirty acres of ground planted, and seines set 
for fishing. Also, Captain Xewport had left some 
swine and fowls, and the squealing of sixty pigs and 
the peeping of five hundred spring chickens might 
be heard, when there came a new calamity. Eats 
from the ships increased rapidly in numbers and 
devoured the little corn that was left, and the people 
were again near starvation, keeping themselves alive 
through the summer by living like the Indians, 
picking berries, roots, and herbs in the woods, and 
catching fish and crabs. A terrible winter followed, 
when many of the colonists died from cold and 
famine, while the Indians, watching with savage 
glee, shot at them "flights of arrows tipped with 
death/' 

Of the five hundred persons at Jamestow r n in 
October, only sixty feeble, tottering men, women, and 
children crept out to meet the Deliverance, when 



26 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

she sailed up the river in May, bringing indeed de- 
liverance for the time, but enough food for only 
one month. Then the leaders, with tears in their 
eyes, decided that Virginia must be abandoned, for 
what could brave men endure more than they had 
endured ? 

So June 7, 1610, was a sad day, when it seemed 
certain that the seed of the Church had been blighted 
and would never live and thrive in American soil; 
for then the Jamestown people determined to go 
back to England, and to the melancholy roll of drums 
they stripped their cabins of their furnishings, 
buried their cannon in the earth, and embarking on 
the pinnaces sailed away down river, leaving the de- 
serted Jamestown in the sombre silence of the forest. 

But next day, as the boats sped on, "a black 
speck was seen far below on the broad waters of 
Hampton Eoads, no red-man's canoe, but, Heaven be 
praised, an English long-boat," coming with the glad 
message that Lord Delaware, the newly-appointecl 
Governor of the colony, was close at hand with three 
well-stocked ships. Three days later, the people stood 
once more in Jamestown, drawn up in military array, 
while Lord Delaware, landing, fell upon his knees 
and thanked God that he had come in time to save 
Virginia. 

The new governor devoted himself with zeal and 
wisdom to strengthening the colony and the Church ; 
the men were kept at work; the Indians were driven 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 27 

back; new fortifications were built; the houses were 
repaired, and the church was made more dignified 
with a new walnut altar, a tall pulpit, a font, and 
a full-toned bell, whose clear voice called over the 
water and through the forest; and, as the governor 
loved flowers, the church was always decorated with 
the abundant bright and fragrant blossoms of the 
fields and woods. The colony, as was needful for 
the best good of all, was governed strictly; men were 
forbidden to stay away from Church services or to 
speak against the Faith, or fail to honor a clergyman, 
to take a voyage on Sunday except to church, or fire 
a gun except for defence against Indians, and every 
man had to bring to church a gun with plenty of 
shot. Each colonist was given land to cultivate for 
his own use; and thrift and order prevailed, while 
great efforts were made to pacify the Indians. 

By 1624 the colony had spread up the James 
Eiver as far as Eichmond; there were plantations on 
both banks, with stout block-houses and palisades at 
exposed points. The wooden houses were made with 
rough-hewn beams, but were roomy and comfortable, 
and here and there was a handsome mansion. Oxen 
and cows, sheep and goats, pigs and chickens were 
innumerable; pigeons cooed and bees hummed over 
the broad fields now grown with tobacco, wheat, bar- 
ley, and tasselled Indian corn. The University men 
of the colony were beginning to send to England 
for hooks for their homes, and to think how their 



28 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

children should be educated in this western world, 
and, as early as 1621, some of these resolved to found 
a public free-school to "educate the children and to 
ground them in the principles of religion." 

This school was designed not only for white 
youths, but also for missionary work among the In- 
dians; but the leaders in the movement were killed 
in an Indian massacre, and it was not until years 
later that the College of William and Mary, all but 
established in 1622, and the oldest after Harvard 
in the United States, came into being. Thus these 
men of the English Church, with high aims and in- 
telligent foresight, put their faith in education as a 
hope for the future good of the land; nor did they 
wait for the College of William and Mary before 
providing by their legislature for the education of 
the Indians, provision being made for "securing by 
fair means Indian children to be educated in true 
religion, of whom the most forwardly in wit and 
graces of nature should be fitted in an English col- 
lege, from thence to go to convert their own people." 
And from time to time, acts were passed for the 
preservation of the purity of the doctrine and unity 
of the Church, directing ministers and people to obey 
the old teaching of the Church of England. 

Jamestown was not only the first home of the 
Church in the western wilderness, but there religion 
and wise government were bound together in sym- 
pathy, and in the second-built of the Jamestown 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA -"■• 

churches met the first representative legislature of 
America, called the House of Burgesses. A memory 
day for us of this dear country is that day in 1619, 
a year before the Pilgrims landed, when the first 
free government on this continent was set up in 
a church, the first Congress of America represent- 
ing one thousand colonists. The settlement, with 
its palisaded fort, sixty cabins, storehouse and 
magazine, remained the capital of Virginia until, in 
1699, it was moved to Williamsburgh. 

But, though Jamestown lost its pre-eminence, the 
final success of the colony impelled other settle- 
ments in the country, and its triumph in governing 
solved the problem of our free country with its 
government by the people. And. meantime, English 
settlers were rapidly making homes for themselves 
on the banks of the Virginia rivers and building 
churches wherever they built homes. In 1639, nine 
years after the settlement of Boston, the Church 
was so strong in Virginia that in Jamestown alone 
three churches had been built ; and in closely follow- 
ing years churches throughout Virginia were fast 
rising, built of imported bricks, and still standing 
on the banks of creeks, half-concealed by ancient 
pines and sycamores, houses of worship wherein man 
lias met his Heavenly Father for more than two hun- 
dred years. 

' "Across Jamestown fields in later years tramped 
the armies that brought into being our nation, and 



30 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

on them are remains of the fortifications built in the 
later struggle that confirmed the unity of the na- 
tion" which is to-day a great power of the earth, 
grown from the feeble little colony of 1607. Corn- 
wallis' last fight was at Jamestown, and American 
independence was won at Yorktown, nineteen miles 
from the place where English civilization was first 
planted in America. 

But to-day Jamestown is gone; partly buried in 
the earth, and partly eaten away by the ceaseless 
pounding of the giant hammer of the broad river, 
which is gnawing away the island at the rate of six 
feet a year. Scattered over the fertile fields and in 
the noble groves of pines and oaks, we may find 
pieces of brick from the foundations of the homes 
of the pioneers ; beads, striped like gooseberries, with 
which they traded with the Indians, and fragments 
of red and white clay pipe stems. We may see the 
earthen walls of a fort built in 1681 ; a few lonely 
gravestones and the ruins of one large house, the 
Ambler mansion; and if we explore this buried city 
carefully, we may unearth memorials which bring 
vividly before us the age of Captain Smith and the 
pioneers — scraps of rusty armor, a bit of a halberd, 
a spiked ball, silver and copper coins, a pewter basin, 
a glass bottle beautifully iridescent from long burial, 
or a fragment of stained glass from the church win- 
dows. And while we gather up our mementoes, there 
soars above us the best memento of all, and the best 




^1 






RUINS OF TIIK JAMESTOWN 1VA.1 TOWER. 



OF THE CHURCH IX AMERICA 31 

representative of the old colony to which the Church 
was the first and dearest love, for not far from the 
river-bank is still standing the venerable church- 
tower, the oldest piece of masonry in the land of the 
American colonies. It is thirty-six feet high, with 
walls three feet in thickness; and above its always 
open door and arched windows are loop-holes, made 
nearly three hundred years ago for the guns of the 
soldiers who guarded Jamestown and the infant 
home of our Church from the lurking, threatening 
Indians. 

Jamestown, that was once on the now deserted 
island, still is in the warm, living hearts of the 
American people; and the nation celebrated noble 
memory days in 1907, because at Jamestown three 
hundred years ago began her free institutions and 
government; but the Church kept these memory 
days also, because the Jamestown settlers were 
Church people, and then and there planted the 
Church in America. 



IV. 
In Maine and New Hampshire. 

In the years when Sir Walter Ealeigh and his 
associates were struggling with zeal and devotion to 
settle English people and the English Church in the 
southern part of our land, other Englishmen were 
taking a northern course across the Atlantic, and 
were sailing in the fragrant shadows of the spruce 
trees through the passages among the beautiful 
wooded islands of Maine, skirting the picturesque, 
cove-indented rocky coast, and making their way 
up the deep, broad tide-rivers, always wonderful and 
charming to those who had known only the small 
streams of England. Among these early voyagers 
were Captain Gosnold and Martin Pring, who came, 
in 1603, in the Speedwell, fitted out by Eicharcl Hak- 
\njt and others, and who were greatly pleased with 
the "high country full of great woods," and the fine 
fishing. 

In 1605, Captain George Weymouth, skirting the 
Maine coast, "fell in with fair land richly grown 
with vines, currants, angelica, and divers gums," and 
caught plenty of fish of "great bigness." As he 
ascended the noble rivers in his pinnace, he carried 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 33 

always crosses to set up as a sign of the possession 
of the country for England and the Church, "a 
thing never omitted by any Christian travellers": 
and in the June days he was delighted with the ver- 
dant earth and the wide, glassy waters, bordered by 
pretty coves and green grass, and melodious with the 
notes of the wild birds. 

Also Captain John Smith, the hero of Jamestown, 
in one of his adventurous voyages, came to the island 
Monhegan and to the Isles of Shoals, and sailed up 
the Kennebec Biver, trading with the Indians, ex- 
ploring the shores, and writing a short history of the 
district. 

In 1607, the year of the Jamestown settlement, 
the Plymouth Company in England, whose leaders 
were Lord John Popham, Chief Justice of England, 
and Sir Ferdinando Gorges, sent out a small com- 
pany of emigrants who, sailing from Plymouth in 
the month when Jamestown was founded, landed on 
August 11th upon an island of the Maine shore, and 
"immediately assembled to give thanks to Almighty 
God and to listen to a sermon.*' This was the first 
Church service of Xew England, then taken posses- 
sion of for the Church and the Faith. The com- 
manders of this expedition were George Popham, a 
brother of the Chief Justice, and Ealeigh Gilbert, a 
nephew of Sir Walter Ealeigh. After building a fort 
and some cottages, and sinking a well which still 
may be seen, together with fragments of English 



34 .SOME MEMORY DAYS 

brick, the colonists found the island too small for a 
settlement and the water bitter, and so removed to 
the mainland where they built a new fort and block- 
house. In December the ships sailed for England, 
leaving a little company of forty-five men between a 
waste of waters and an unbroken wilderness ; but the 
severe cold and the unfriendly Indians were too 
much for even the splendid courage of these men, 
and drove them back to England in a vessel of their 
own handiwork, the first vessel built on this conti- 
nent, leaving only the traces of their building and 
the memory of one winter when the children of the 
Church, first upon the ground in the North as well 
as in the South, worshipped God in the great wilder- 
ness, speaking to Him in the words of the English 
Prayer Book. 

One of the noblemen who for long years strug- 
gled constantly to make English settlements in the 
northern part of this country was Sir Ferdinando 
Gorges, who, in 1620, from King James, and again 
in 1639, from King Charles I., obtained a charter 
of the Province of Maine, making him the proprietor 
and governor of a great extent of territory and many 
islands. In all this province, the government and 
articles of Faith of the Church of England were 
established by law; and Americans should justly re- 
member with deep gratitude Sir Ferdinando Gorges, 
the devoted Churchman, the man kind to all who, 
faithful to his king, died, fighting, at the age of 



OF THE CHURCH IX AMERICA 35 

seventy-four, and who by God's grace established the 
old Faith in the northern part of our country. His 
son, Thomas, came over as deputy-governor and 
settled at York, where, in 1642, rose a little city 
called Gorgiana. 

In 1643, another portion of Maine, called Lygo- 
nia, was purchased by Col. Alexander Bigby, a gen- 
tleman of education, wealth, influence, and piety, 
who became the friend of the poor and of the clergy, 
and made generous exertions to give religious in- 
struction to the people of his province, the islanders, 
and the fishermen. 

Among the pioneer workers of the Church in 
New England was the Kev. Eichard Gibson, who, in 
1637, settled as the first rector on Eichmond's 
Island, Maine, where probably also a church was 
built. In 1640, Mr. Gibson removed to Portsmouth, 
to become the first rector of the Church in Xew 
Hampshire, at a dark and troubled time when the 
Church was persecuted in Xew England and her 
Sacraments were forbidden by law. So it was that 
Mr. Gibson was summoned before the court as a 
criminal, because he baptized children on the Isles 
of Shoals, and for the offence of "being wholly ad- 
dicted to the discipline of the English Church," and 
because "he did marry and baptize'' he was thrown 
into prison. 

Mr. Gibson's successor at Eichmond's Island was 
the Eev. Eobert Jordan. a a gentleman equal to any 



36 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

in Boston, and a divine of the Church of England," 
who came to this country in 1640. He was a man 
"of great parts,*' active, enterprising, and "by educa- 
tion placed above the people about him." He was 
faithful to his calling, and journeyed through the 
wilderness from place to place, carrying the grace 
and comfort of the Sacraments to the scattered set- 
tlers, many of whom were Church people. For this, 
and for baptizing children, he, like Mr. Gibson, was 
called before the court and imprisoned ; but, when he 
was freed, he continued to be true to his office, and 
his descendants have to-day a precious memorial of 
his faithfulness in the little silver christening basin 
which, 250 years ago, held the pure water "sancti- 
fied to the mystical washing away of the sins'' of 
many children born in the western wilderness, far 
from the parish churches of their fathers, but still, 
through baptism, in the heart of that dear Church. 

Mr. Jordan* s talents and his determination, per- 
severance, and self-reliance were of great service to 
the people of Maine in other ways than the minis- 
trations of the Church; he was prominent in busi- 
ness affairs of the district, and conducted difficult 
enterprises and administered important trusts in a 
country largely unsettled and in terror of hostile In- 
dians, who destroyed his own house, from which his 
family barely escaped. 

This good man's sound judgment and elevation 
above the superstition of the age are believed to have 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 37 

saved Maine, at a critical moment, from the witch- 
craft madness. In the days of the delusion of the 
Salem witches, a man whose "way was contrary to 
the Gospel of Christ" boarded at the house of Good- 
man Bayly, near the rector's farm. One day Bayly's 
wife gravely told her boarder that he must reform or 
leave her house, and he was very angry; and, as a 
cow of the rector's chanced to die just then, and this 
man knew that Goody Bayly was to go that way 
on a journey, he declared to Mr. Jordan's servant 
that the cow had been bewitched, and that by burn- 
ing the carcass the witch would be brought to the 
place. So they burned the carcass, and lo, up the 
road came Goody Bayly ! 

"Wonder and excitement were great among the 
people, and poor Goody Bayly was "called up" for a 
witch. But the rector interposed, explaining that 
the cow had died because of the negligence of his 
servant, who, to cover his own fault, had been ready 
to attribute the misfortune to witchcraft, and that 
Goody Bayly's boarder had known that she was to 
come that way, and without permission had burned 
the cow to suit the time of her coming. Thus he 
unravelled what had seemed a great marvel, exposed 
the wicked, delivered the innocent, and by his clear- 
headed common-sense and justice averted from 
Maine the infamy and pitiful sufferings of a witch- 
craft persecution, causing that state to stand lumi- 
nous in the dark clays of the strange delusion which 



38 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

shadowed other parts of the young country with 
dreadful gloom; for in Maine no poor soul was ever 
again "called up" for witchcraft. 

Captain John Mason, who was associated with 
Sir Ferdinando Gorges in the grant of the great 
Province of Maine, took for his share the part which 
is now New Hampshire, and sent out a colony which 
settled, probably, in May, 1623, near the mouth of 
the Piscataqua Eiver. When the colonists in their 
high-sterned ship sailed on the bright May morning 
into the wide river, with islands green to the water's 
edge "like emerald bubbles floating on the sea," and 
stately pines and oaks and flowering shrubs, and 
the wild birds singing welcome, and the timid deer 
looking out from their covert, all seemed new and 
wonderful and grand, and they were glad to find 
such a peaceful haven after the fogs and storms of 
the voyage. It is said that they met the Indians in 
council, and, in exchange for beads, knives, and fish- 
hooks, obtained their good-will and permission to 
take all the land that they could use. The beautiful 
country seemed like an old-world land to these set- 
tlers, who, moreover, found abundance of food in the 
cod from the ocean, salmon and trout from the 
brooks, clams from the shore, and game from the 
forest. The men were self-reliant and law-abiding 
and able to found and govern a state for themselves 
and their children. Captain Mason sent out skilled 
mechanics to his eolonv at Dover and Strawberry 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 39 

Bank (now Portsmouth) and built there a large 
fortified house and the first saw-mill and corn-mill 
in New England. 

Moreover, many of these New Hampshire colon- 
ists were Churchmen, and early made provision for 
the establishment of the Church at Strawberry Bank, 
where, in 1640, a glebe of fifty acres was deeded to 
the Church wardens; and in the royal charter of 
New Hampshire is the clause : "Our will and pleas- 
ure is that the religion of the Church of England 
shall be ever preferred and established with as much 
convenient speed as may be." 

So the Church of our fathers was first in the 
field in New Hampshire as well as in Maine, and 
one of our memory days is the lovely May day of 
1623, when Captain Mason's English colonists sailed 
up the Piscataqua Eiver, to plant the precious seed 
of the Church in this part of America, and built on 
the site of Portsmouth a "chapel and a parsonage- 
house as a free and voluntary act." 

But after the Eev. Eichard Gibson, the first New 
Hampshire rector, left Strawberry Bank, and after 
the Eev. Eobert Jordan, who in 1679 was living in 
Great Island, the only priest in all New England, 
died, we do not know much about the Church there, 
until 1732, when, under the auspices of the English 
Missionary Society for Propagating the Gospel in 
Foreign Parts, and with the help of two generous 
Englishmen, was built in Portsmouth and named in 



40 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

honor of Queen Caroline, old St. John's Church, 
Portsmouth, which stood on the hill by the river on 
the site of Queen's Chapel. Queen Caroline gave 
the infant church a Bible, a Prayer Book, "printed 
on the best of vellum," and the silver Communion 
service, which is used in St. John's to this day. 

The first rector of Queen's Chapel was the Eev. 
Arthur Browne, a man of "real culture, unpreten- 
tious goodness, and eminent worth," of whom Long- 
fellow sings as marrying Governor Wentworth and 
his maid, Martha Hilton : 

"But I must mention one, in bands and gown. 
The rector there, the Reverend Arthur Browne, 
Of the Established Church; with smiling face 
He sat beside the governor and said grace." 

The present St. John's Church was built just a 
hundred years ago, after "the holy and beautiful 
house built by the fathers" had been destroyed by 
fire. Within its old brick walls are many interest- 
ing articles to remind us of the church in other days. 
The bell, ringing Christmas peals from the belfry, 
was brought by Sir William Pepperell from Louis- 
burg, and recast by Paul Eevere ; upon its metal are 
engraved these words: 

"From Saint John's steeple 
I call the people 
On holy days 
To prayer and praise." 

A carved chair given by Queen Caroline, and oc- 
cupied at one service by General Washington, stands 



OF THE CHURCH IX AMERICA 41 

in the chancel; the thin, sweet notes of the old Brat- 
tle organ ma)' still be heard — the organ brought 
from England in 1713, and said to be the "first 
organ that ever pealed to the glory of God in this 
country." Queen Caroline's Bible and Prayer Book 
lie in glass-covered cases, and the Bible on the read- 
ing-desk was a gift from the grandson of the Bev. 
Arthur Browne; while in the chancel stands the 
strange font of dark porphyritic marble, brought in 
1758 from Africa, and upon this, beneath a fair 
white cloth, are placed each Sunday twelve loaves of 
bread, the weekly dole given out to the poor all these 
hundred years. So old St. John's stands on its hill 
by the swirling river, binding new times to old, and 
calling us to remember that nearly three hundred 
years ago the English settlers at Strawberry Bank 
planted there, with the foundations of a state, the 
seed of the Church to bless their children's children. 



In Massachusetts. 

In very early days there were Churchmen in 
Massachusetts also. John Mjorton came from Eng- 
land in 1623, bringing thirty servants, with furni- 
ture of all kinds, and cattle, and settled at Merry- 
mount, near Boston. Bluff and merry, but generous, 
devout, and true to the old Faith, he lived the life 
of an English squire, and read daily prayers and the 
Sunday service before his large household, who cele- 
brated the Church festivals and feasted at Christmas 
on abundant roasts of venison and mince pies. 

In Salem, whose stern people had turned from 
the Faith of their fathers and even had forbidden the 
use of the Prayer Book, two brave brothers, Browne 
by name, and called "men much respected," refused 
to forsake the Church, and in their humble cabins 
with their families read daily prayers, and gathered 
a company of their neighbors to join with them in 
the dear, familiar worship of the Book of Common 
Prayer. 

In these same days where now is Boston a Church 
clergyman, the Eev. William Blaxton, "a man of very 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 43 

loving and courteous religion," was quietly living on 
a broad farm surrounded by pleasant apple orchards, 
and having for neighbors Thomas Walford and Sam- 
uel Maverick, also Churchmen, and known through 
the then wild country as always kind to strangers. 

But on a memory day in May, 1686, the first 
rector for Massachusetts, the Eev. Mr. Eatcliffe, an 
Oxford graduate, sailed into Boston harbor on the 
frigate Rose, and on the following Sunday, May 16th, 
read service and preached in the Town House, to 
the joy of many of the Boston people who had been 
long without the services of the loved Church of their 
birth, and who now, on June 15th, formed the first 
Boston parish, for which soon was built the first 
Boston church, "established for the sole purpose of 
the worship of God." This was the modest first 
building of King's Chapel, which was a missionary 
enterprise, and in which the first service was held on 
June 30th, 1689. 

The founders of the Church in 'New England, like 
those in Virginia, earnestly wished to do missionary 
work among the Indians, and one of the King's 
Chapel clergy begged for an assistant to stay in Bos- 
ton while he, having learned the Indian language, 
went out among these unhappy people, to try to do 
their poor souls good." 

In 1710, King's Chapel was enlarged, and to it 
came gifts of furnishings, books, and Communion 
silver from the English sovereigns, from William and 



44 SOME MEMORY DAYS 



to George III. Its organ is said to have been 
selected by the great musician Handel, and the bill 
of lading states that it was "shipped by the grace of 
God in good order/' King's Chapel was the only 
place in Boston where the forms of the English 
Church could be seen, and the same noble anthems 
heard which resounded through the cathedrals of the 
Mother country. The uniforms of the little Boston 
court brightened the doorways, and the escutcheons 
of the royal governors hung against the pillars of 
the splendid canopied pew in which sat three of the 
royal governors of Massachusetts; and at Christmas- 
time the walls were garlanded with evergreen, and 
joyous hymns for the first time broke upon the silence 
of the day in New England. 

In Christmas week of 1723, the first service was 
held in the second Boston church, Christ Church. 
This church, still standing, but little changed, was 
considered a grand building in its day, with its two- 
and-a-half-feet-thick walls and soaring steeple. 
Within are balconies supported by pillars and arches, 
deep window-seats and lofty windows, each contain- 
ing seventy-five tiny panes of ancient, greenish-white 
glass. The chancel wall is adorned with tablets on 
which are traced in golden letters the Creed, the 
Lord's Prayer, and Scripture passages on which many 
looked and found comfort in the trying times of the 
old colonial days. Four curious wooden images blow- 
ing vigorously on long pipes adorn the organ-loft, 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA. 45 

and the worn silver tankards and chalices of the Com- 
munion service bear inscriptions to the effect that 
they are the "gift of King George II. of England to 
his faithful subjects."' The old hour-glass pulpit is 
gone,, but the oldest chime of bells in this country 
still rings in wonderfully sweet tones on Sundays and 
at Christmas, when thousands of persons listen with 
delight to hear the silvery bells calling joyously, as 
they have done since Boston was a little English 
colonial town in 1744, "0 come, all ye faithful, come, 
let us adore Him/ 3 

The first rector of Christ Church congregation, 
which was called "very devout and conscientious." 
was the Eev. Timothy Cutler, a Harvard graduate. 
afterward President of Yale College, and a man of 
"'profound learning and dignity." About the year 
1710; when Mr. Cutler was a youth, and far away 
from the Church, a Prayer Book was given him by a 
]V£r. Smithson, whose name should be among our hon- 
ored memory names because of this one kind mission- 
ary deed which led to great results : for young Tim- 
othy Cutler read his Prayer Book to good purpose, 
learning to love it and the Church to which it be- 
longed, and he gathered a group of men who. for 
some years, quietly studied, seeking the truth, and 
finding it at last in the Church of all Christian ages. 
It was a wonderful day for this good man when, after 
learning to love the Church whose outward form he 
had never seen, he came to his first service. In his 



46 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

diary for that day is this entry: "I first went to 
Church. How amiable are Thy tabernacles, Lord 
God of hosts !" And of his first Communion, he 
wrote : "How devout, grand, and venerable every part 
of the service is, as becoming so awful a mystery." 

Cutler and two of his friends went to England 
for ordination, and on one of our memory days. 
Passion Sunday, 1723, in the Church of St. Martin' s- 
in-the-Field, London, were advanced to the priesthood. 
Then they returned to America, Mr. Johnson to go 
to Stratford, Conn., for a long career of service and 
influence, and then to be President of King's College, 
New York, now Columbia University ; while Dr. Cut- 
ler was called to the new Christ Church in Boston. 

These men were the first of the earnest, native- 
born American clergy who in a few years taught New 
England the nature of the Church, into which they 
drew large numbers of sober-minded, thoughtful, and 
devout people. 

The third Boston parish was Trinity, founded in 
1728, and ministered to first by one of the King's 
Chapel clergy and later by Dr. Samuel Parker, in 
whose long, faithful pastorate came the Bevolution, 
with its "days that tried men's souls," and especially 
Churchmen's souls, who were distracted between their 
duty to their king and to their country. In the begin- 
ning of the war, Dr. Parker called together his people, 
and explaining how he would no longer be permitted 
to use the prayers for the king, secured their consent 






OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 47 

to omitting these for the sake of the Church, which 
thus continued in existence through the struggle, and 
gave to all the Church people of Boston a home, 
strength, and comfort in Trinity Church. 

Among other old Massachusetts churches in which 
Churchmen still worship God, are Christ Church, 
Cambridge, built in 1711; St. Paul's, Newburyport. 
and St. Michael's, Marblehead, built in 1714, and 
ministered to at first by the chaplains of English 
frigates which touched at Marblehead on their way 
to Boston. 



VI. 

Other Beginnings. 

By 1699 the Church people of Khode Island had 
begun to hold public worship, and, being poor and 
scattered, the)' petitioned the English government to 
aid them, saying that, "though they were disposed to 
do all they could toward supporting a pious minister, 
they were not in a capacity to contribute as much 
as was requisite." This petition to the King and 
Bishop of London had two memorable results: the 
building of Trinity Church, in Newport, and the im- 
pulse it gave to the originating of the venerable mis- 
sionary society called the Society for Propagating the 
Gospel in Foreign Parts, known as the S. P. G. The 
first Trinity Church was built in 1702; and in 1726 
was built the present venerable house of worship, al- 
most unchanged from its first days, with its spacious 
square pews furnished like sitting-rooms, its lofty pul- 
pit, old-time sounding-board, and clerk's pew, high 
galleries, and even the royal crown of colonial days 
still glittering on the steeple. In the soaring pulpit 
Dean Berkeley often preached, and in Trinity church- 
yard was buried his little daughter, who died in 
America. 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 49 

In 1?06 was built the Narragansett church at 
East Greenwich, now the oldest church building in 
Xew England. And in these long-ago times Church 
services were begun at St. John's Mission, Providence, 
under the pastorate of the Eev. Mr. Checkley, once 
of Boston, who, after long years of brave service as 
a layman, was ordained in the year 1739, at the age 
of sixty, and "greatly desired and received with joy' 7 
at Providence, where he labored faithfully for four- 
teen years, for Indians and negroes as well as for the 
white people of his parish. 

In the closing years of the seventeenth century. 
among certain good men in England, lived one Dr. 
Bray, whose name should be among our honored 
memory names. He was the hardworking rector of 
a parish in the heart of England ; studying the needs 
of the people, and grieving at the ignorance of the 
clergy of the time, he interested his Bishop and some 
others of wealth and generosity in founding the So- 
ciety for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, the 
first purpose of which was to furnish religious li- 
braries for clergy and people, and beside, to provide 
libraries for the Church in the colonies. In 1695 Dr. 
Bray was sent by the Bishop of London (who was. 
in a way, Bishop of all the English colonies in Amer- 
ica) to examine the condition of the Church in 
America. After five years of faithful toil, Dr. Bray 
returned to England to report the pressing needs of 
the American Church, and, with his heart full of 



50 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

love for America, to write and circulate pamphlets 
and letters, to appeal to Parliament and the Bishops, 
to engage the warm interest of the Queen, and finally 
to rouse the good people of England to the organiza- 
tion of the first missionary society of the English 
Church, the S. P. G., formed by one hundred of the 
noblest men in the land, including the Archbishop 
of Canterbury. The popularity of the new r society 
was great, and splendid gifts of money, books, 
landed estates, and even whole townships came pour- 
ing in. All Bishops were asked to choose fit persons 
for colonial missionaries, men of prudence, learning, 
zeal, and loyalty to the Church, men who would be 
examples of piety and virtue on the ships which 
should take them, and who would endeavor to induce 
the ships' captains to have daily prayers, men fre- 
quent in private prayer, familiar with the Bible and 
Player Book, and ready to preach against vice, teach 
the nature and need of the Sacraments, visit their peo- 
ple, and ^ear themselves as gentlemen and as Chris- 
tians." These men, as a rule, made a great impres- 
sion by their high character and faithful Churchman- 
ship, and greatly raised the zeal and spirit of the 
American Church. The first of these missionaries 
were George Keith, once a Quaker, and John Talbot, 
who went from place to place, and probably held the 
first Church service of Connecticut in New London, 
on September 13, 1702, and soon gathered together in 
Philadelphia hundreds for the Church and "to build 



OF THE CHURCH IX AMERICA 51 

houses for her worship." Then more missionaries 
were sent, whose letters, written from seaboard cities, 
backwoods, and Indian encampments, gave a vivid 
picture of life in our Church in America during the 
seventy years when such a noble work was done for it 
fry the venerable society and its faithful missionaries. 
In 1729, a noble and good friend of America, one 
of the first to discern the future greatness of this 
Western world, Dean Berkeley, came to Newport with 
a plan to establish a Church college on the two foun- 
dations of religion and learning. Learned men of va- 
rious religious views went to see him and came away 
impressed in favor of the Church that produced and 
held such a man. "They went to see a philosopher 
and found a Churchman." Dean Berkeley was not 
able to carry out his plan, but, nevertheless, he accom- 
plished much for the Church which he loved and 
served; for he left his library of 1,000 books to Yale 
College, and his farm to found a scholarship in the 
same college, and from this came a constant stream 
of earnest men who, influenced by the spirit of their 
benefactor and his Church and books, have moulded 
the lives of many seekers after truth. Dean Berke- 
ley's wise counsel also fixed the union of religion and 
learning in the University of Pennsylvania and Col- 
umbia University, and thus the good man's wisdom 
and love for the Church have left a deep impression 
not on one small college, but on three great univer- 
sities. 



52 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

The Dutch who settled on- Manhattan Island were 
not Churchmen, but, when in 1664 the fleet of the 
Duke of York dropped anchor in the bay, bringing 
the English flag, it brought also the English Church, 
and the chaplain at once began to read prayers in the 
little log chapel of Fort James. By 1690 the Church 
in New York was growing fast and winning many of 
the younger Dutch people who had become young 
Americans and had learned to love the English 
tongue and the English Church; and, in 1697, these 
joined in organizing Trinity parish and building its 
first church, which is described as standing pleasantly 
on the banks of the Hudson, with a churchyard, as 
now, on either side, and in front, "a painted paled 
fence/' 

In New Jersey the Bev. George Keith did noble 
service for the Church, holding his first service as 
mission priest at Amboy. Another brave missionary 
to New Jersey was the Eev. Thomas Thompson, a 
fellow of Christ Church, Cambridge, who, "fired with 
pure zeal for the work of God," left his high position 
in England to labor for years in America, and then to 
leave his post there to become, in 1751, the first mis- 
sionary of the Church to Africa. 

While Trinity and other parishes in New York 
were fast growing, the Philadelphia people were be- 
ginning to hold Church services in a wooden shed, 
with a bell swung from a neighboring tree. Here, in 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 53 

1)00, Christ Church was organized, and its brick 

church built; and, in a short time, hundreds of the 
people were baptized into the Church, which grew 
rapidly in Philadelphia, greatly helped by the earnest 
labors of the Key. George Keith, who, going from 
Philadelphia to England, had returned to his old 
home as one of the first missionaries of the S. P. G. 
In the year 1700, in the territory which is now 
the United States, there were not quite sixty clergy- 
men, and these were scattered from Portsmouth. 
iSTew Hampshire, to Charleston, South Carolina : 
there were a few substantial brick churches, but in 
country places were small log chapels to which the 
people came on foot, in canoes, and on horseback. 
from twenty, thirty, and forty miles away. Prayer 
Books were scarce and costly, and few of the smaller 
ones found their way to the colonies, so the clerk had 
to make all the responses, except those the people 
knew by heart. It was a day of small things; still 
many souls in English America were finding shelter 
and joy beneath the spreading branches of the tree 
which had already grown from the precious seed 
brought by the first settlers across the Atlantic, and 
planted by the broad river of Virginia and on the 
rock-bound coast of Maine. 



VII. 

In the South. 

We have seen how, among the spring flowers of 
Virginia and in the northern "land of the pointed 
firs," the first settlers worshipped God with the 
prayers and Sacraments of the Church of England, 
and how the Church was planted all the way from 
the Kennebec river in Maine to the James in Vir- 
ginia. The settlement of this colony was rapid 
after the self-sacrificing people of Jamestown had ob- 
tained a foothold; and a pamphlet printed in 1649, 
called A Perfect Description of Virginia, tells us that 
there were fifteen thousand English settled there, 
owning twenty thousand oxen, bulls and calves, and 
thousands of sheep, goats, and cows, with swine and 
poultry innumerable. In the woods were deer and 
many kinds of game, including "rackoons as good 
meat as lambs," and wild turkeys weighing sixty 
pounds, beside many sweet song-birds, "most rare- 
colored parraketos and mock-birds which imitate all 
other birds' cries, yea, even owls and nightingales." 
There were fifteen kinds of wild fruit, "rivalling the 
fruits of Italy." In less than a hundred years after 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 55 

the starving time at Jamestown, the farmers had 
hundreds of acres of wheat, barley, and Virginia corn, 
"which made good bread and furmity" (porridge), 
and in their gardens grew potatoes, turnips, carrots, 
parsnips, onions, artichokes, asparagus, beans, and 
peas, with herbs and "physic flowers," flourishing 
greatly in the rich soil, watered with fine springs and 
"wholesome waters." 

Some settlers sowed hemp and flax, which were 
spun at home, and they kept weavers and shoe- 
makers, "living bravely" on their great plantations of 
thousands of acres, made up of vast cultivated fields 
and woodlands with noble forest-trees. The rude log- 
cabins of the slaves made a hamlet near which were 
great bams and granaries, stables, cattle-pens, hen- 
coops, dove-cotes, malt houses, dairy, brick-ovens for 
curing ham and bacon, and sometimes a country 
store. In the garden grew all the English vegetables, 
besides "roots, herbs, vine-fruits, and salad flowers*' 
peculiar to Virginia; in a fine orchard grew fruit in 
great variety, and near the Great House were flower- 
beds gay with color and vine-clad arbors. From the 
porch you could look down at the blue river, wdtli pin- 
naces moored at the landing, and canoes darting over 
the water. Inside the house the rooms were clustered 
about the great hall, with its long dining-table, 
flanked by benches and covered with brown holland 
linen, set with pewter mugs and platters. Upon the 



o6 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

wall hung family portraits, and about the room were 
spinning-wheels, great linen-chests, guns, swords, 
powder-horns, saddles, and riding- whips, in cosy con- 
fusion. Huge logs of oak and hickory burned in the 
fireplace, and at night the room was lighted by flick- 
ering candles made of beef-tallow, deer-suet, or the 
wax of myrtle berries which burned with pleasant 
fragrance. In some of the homes were libraries, 
sometimes small, but sometimes large and valuable. 

There were some free schools founded by benevo- 
lent men, of which the Symms School, dating from 
1636, seems the earliest recorded; after 1646 the Vir- 
ginians were compelled by law, in a measure, to fur- 
nish primary education. Nor was the spiritual wel- 
fare of the people neglected, for there were some 
twenty churches with "doctrine and orders of the 
Church of England, and ministers' livings toward 
which each planter paid his share, for in Virginia all 
lived in peace and love." The great planters were 
often justices of the peace, burgesses, and vestrymen ; 
and on Sundays, they with their families went faith- 
fully to their parish churches, often starting very 
early in the morning upon the long journey, by boat 
on the tide-rivers, or on horseback upon the bridle- 
path through the deep, shadowy forests. 

We remember that in North Carolina the Church 
was first in the field, when Raleigh's colony lived for 
a time on Roanoke Island, where the first American- 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 57 

English baby was received by Baptism into the 
Household of God. But after this colony was lost 
North Carolina remained for many years a frontier 
to all the English settlements, a wild border-land 
where English, Spanish; and Indians met each other 
in war. Its settlers lived lonely lives, scattered about 
among the pine forests; yet to them also came, in 
1703, a missionary of the Church of England. 

In 1607, King Charles II., who is remembered 
in the name Carolina, granted the territory of these 
states to eight lords who had done him great services. 
Among these was Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of 
Shaftesbury, in whose family one of the greatest men 
of England, John Locke, lived as "physician, private 
tutor, adviser, and guardian angel. " He once saved 
Shaftesbury's life by skilful surgery: he taught the 
boy Greek, and "being so good a judge of men was 
believed to be also a judge of women," and was en- 
trusted with the choosing of a wife for his charge, for 
whom he made the good selection of Lady Dorothy 
Manners of Haddon Hall. 

In this same summer, while the philosopher was 
thus engaged, he was also drawing up a constitution 
for the new colony, Carolina, which was thus closely 
connected in its beginnings with Englishmen of noble 
family and noble minds. 

Already, on April 19th in 1660, which was also 
Maundy Thursday, a company of English, accom- 



58 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

panied by their chaplain, had landed in South Caro- 
lina; and there is little doubt but that the solemn 
services of Good Friday and the joyous celebration of 
the Easter Festival marked the occupancy of that 
state by the English. 

In 1670 Governor Sayle, with the first perma- 
nent colonists, began building a village near the junc- 
tion of the Ashley and Cooper Eivers. This was 
soon afterward removed to the site of Charleston, into 
which it grew. The first church, made of black cy- 
press, was built in 1681 upon land given by Originall 
Jackson and his wife Melicent, who made the gift, 
"being excited with a pious zeal for the propagation 
of the true Christianity which they professed"; and 
they desired that "in this church divine service 
should be established to be solemnly performed by 
Atkin Williamson, cleric, and his heirs and assigns 
forever." In 1710 this old St. Philip's church be- 
came too small for the congregation, who built the 
new brick St. Philip's, which is still standing, a cher- 
ished memorial of colonial days. In 1751 was built 
St. Michael's, which also to-day is one of Charleston's 
beautiful and honored memorials. 

The successor of St. Philip's first rector was the 
Eev. Mr. Marshall, one of the many self-sacrificing 
missionaries who left honorable positions in the old 
home for the sake of the struggling young Church in 
America. Like many of the early clergy of South 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 59 

Carolina, he was a man of fine education and high 
character, and his unusual ability, pure spirit, and 
faithful ministry won the support of the Charleston 
people and built up the Church on sure foundations. 

The missionaries to South Carolina were sent out 
by the S. P. G., not only to the white population, but 
also to convert the Indians and instruct the slaves, 
and they were faithful in this work, toiling sometimes 
for years to prepare these poor people for baptism, 
and afterward watching over them with loving care. 
One missionary, the Eev. Dr. Le Jau, was especially 
devoted to this work, and wrote to England of these 
people : "The Indians, our neighbors, come to see me 
and I admire their sense of justice and their patience ; 
and when we converse with them in language they 
can understand, we see that their souls are fit material 
which can be polished." With a feeble frame and 
suffering with a painful disease, Dr. Le Jau toiled on, 
faithfully visiting his own flock as well as his "In- 
dian neighbors," taking great care to go to the sick, 
"though not sent for," and struggling to lift up the 
colored slaves of the colony. 

There was strong interest in public education in 
South Carolina, and a number of free schools were 
established, the first one of which was built in 1711 
or in 1712, by the S. P. G., for the benefit of the 
youth of Charleston. They were there taught not 
only the "Three K ? s," but also the "learned Ian- 



60 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

guages," i.e., Latin and Greek, and there they were to 
be instructed in the principles of the Church of Eng- 
land. 

1715 the Yamassee Indians rose against the white 
settlers, and the country missionaries were obliged to 
flee to Charleston, leaving all that they had to the 
pitiless foe. So did the missionaries to our very own 
land suffer, as our missionaries to other lands have 
suffered in our day. 

In 1720 the new royal Governor of South Caro- 
lina received from the king instructions to "take es- 
pecial care" that God Almighty be devoutly served 
throughout the colony; that the book of Common 
Prayer be read each Sunday and Holy Day, and the 
Blessed Sacrament administered. "The Governor 
was also required to see that the one hundred and 
thirty-one churches were orderly kept," and the min- 
isters given a "competent maintenance and a con- 
venient house and glebe; that schoolmasters should 
be provided, and that vice should be punished and 
good living encouraged." All this was ordered nearly 
two hundred years ago, under the guidance and pro- 
tection of the Church in South Carolina. 

Georgia was the last settled of the thirteen orig- 
inal colonies, and, while English settlements were 
growing rapidly in America, Georgia was still a fron- 
tier wilderness of woods and swamps, teeming with 
alligators and other reptiles. Much of the credit of 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 61 

taming this great wilderness and opening the state to 
settlers is due to the valiant General James Ogle- 
thorpe, who arrived on the shore in January, 1733, 
and purchased from the Indians a large tract of land 
upon a high bluff which afterward became the city 
of Savannah. General Oglethorpe, with his gallant 
Highland regiment, protected the country, until, in 
1742, the Spanish were defeated and the frontier be- 
came quiet. 

The principal object in settling Georgia was the 
providing an asylum for the unfortunate but honest 
debtors who for no fault but poverty were suffering 
in the wretched English jails, a place where, in a 
genial climate, these poor people might earn their 
daily bread by labor. The movement won its success 
largely by the support of the clergy and the Church 
in the motherland. "Xot for themselves, but for 
others,'' was the motto of the leaders in this noble 
work. The charter of the crown lands granted by 
King George II., in 1732, was to trustees who were 
mainly Churchmen, and who decreed for the colonists 
liberty of conscience, and with rare self-denial de- 
clared that they themselves would receive "no grant 
by land or salary or fee or profit of any kind from 
the undertaking" ; and this act was an act of faith 
and charity of the Church of England. 

About one hundred and twenty-five colonist*, 
known as "sober, industrious and moral persons," 



62 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

were gathered together in England, as the first body 
of Georgia settlers. On one of our Memory days, 
November 12th, the Twenty-third Sunday after Trin- 
ity, in 1732, these colonists met at the church in 
Milton for a solemn farewell service and for the bless- 
ing of the Holy Communion, praying "God, their 
refuge and strength, to hear them, and to grant that 
what they asked faithfully, they might obtain effec- 
tually." Never would they join again in the prayers 
of the Church in the old home, yet the Church was 
to go with them to the new home beyond the ocean, 
for with them w r ent a chaplain, the Eev. Henry Her- 
bert, who, without fee or reward, gave his life to these 
poor people in the spirit of the Master whom he 
served. 

The colony landed on a pine-covered bluff near 
the mouth of the Savannah Biver, in January, 1733, 
and made the next Sunday, Sexagesima, a day of 
thanksgiving for their safe voyage across the winter 
seas in their little ship, the Annie, which brought 
w r ith the colonists a precious freight of Bibles, Prayer 
Books, Catechisms, books of devotion, and a religious 
library. Thus the settlement of Georgia began guided 
and blessed by the teaching and the prayers of the 
Church. The first chaplain, Dr. Herbert, after only 
three months of service in the colony, was succeeded 
by the Eev. John Wesley, then an enthusiastic young 
clergyman of the Church of England, who gave up 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 63 

brilliant opportunities at home to engage in hard and 
self-sacrificing missionary work among the poor peo- 
ple in the Georgia wilderness. Thus, in about a cen- 
tury and a quarter from the May day when the first 
Church service was read beneath the trees of the 
Jamestown forest, the precious seed of the Church of 
England, brought by the Virginia settlers, had taken 
root in the thirteen English colonies of America. 



VIII. 
A Group of Early Missionaries. 

We have seen how, in the very first years of the 
settlement of America, there were English clergymen 
who rejoiced to give up all for the cause of Christ in 
the New World, where they ministered both to the 
settlers and to the Indians: Master Wolf all in the 
snow and ice of the far North; the priest who, at 
Roanoke Island, baptized the Indian chief Mateo and 
baby Virginia Dare; the devoted Eichard Seymour, 
of Popham's Maine colony; the saintly Eobert Hunt 
of Jamestown ; Whittaker of Virginia, and the perse- 
cuted Eichard Gibson and Eobert Jordan of the 
Maine coast. 

The first missionary to Maryland was, probably, 
the Eev. Eichard James, who, zealous for the exten- 
sion of the Church, came in 1629 to Kent Island near 
the present city of Annapolis. In 1650, the Eev. 
William Wilkinson, with his family and servants, 
settled in a forest glade of the Patuxent, and there 
won for himself and for the Church the regard of the 
pioneers, "gaining by his integrity the care of the 
orphan, and making his home a refuge for the sick 



OF THE CHURCH IX AMERICA 65 

and dying/' while he went about doing good to the 
lonely, scattered people in the wilderness. 

In 1696 the Rev. Hugh Jones, "a faithful, 
learned, and devoted man/' came to Maryland. He 
left to become a professor in the College of William 
and Mary, doing for sixty-five years a double service 
for the Church in the new land, adding to pastoral 
duties the instruction of the young, and gaining the 
name of being a "man of earnest piety, sound learn- 
ing, and devotion." 

The Rev. George Ross, sent out by the S. P. G. 
in 1705, went on a famous missionary journey with 
the governor of Pennsylvania, and in one week's time 
he baptized more than a hundred persons. His son, 
another George Ross, was a devoted patriot and a 
signer of the Declaration of Independence. 

The Rev. Jacob Henderson was a missionary in 
Delaware and Maryland, and built a chapel on his 
own farm. 

To South Carolina came the Rev. Gideon John- 
stone, rector of St. Philip's, Charleston, and the Rev. 
William Gay, missionary to the great St. Helen's 
parish, which included the territory of the Yamassee 
Indians. Having no church building, he went about 
untiringly, conducting divine service and administer- 
ing the Sacraments in the lonely homes of the plant- 
ers, barely escaping with his life in a terrible Indian 
massacre. He spent his later years as rector of St. An- 



GC> SOME MEMORY DAYS 

drew's, thirteen miles from Charleston, where he 
gathered throngs of worshippers into the Church. 

The Rev. James Honeyman, missionary of the 
S. P. G., during forty-five years worked devotedly for 
the Church at Newport, E. I., making also many 
missionary tours in the country settlements, which he 
longed to have "beautiful nurseries of the Church." 
He was an "excellent scholar, an accomplished gentle- 
man, sound and strong in the faith, yet holding in 
love all followers of Christ." A prominent Rhode 
Island missionary was the Rev. Robert McSparran, 
who, after being ordained by the Archbishop of Can- 
terbury in 1720, went to the mission field of Bristol 
and the surrounding towns in Rhode Island, where he 
soon gathered three hundred persons into the Church. 
He worked, meantime, in Connecticut also, where his 
influence won for that state her first missionary, the 
Rev. Samuel Seabury, father of the first Bishop of 
Connecticut. A book written by Dr. McSparran 
gives us some notion of the hardships of life in 
America as it seemed in those days to the English. 
The book is called, it is believed by the publisher, 
"America Dissected," and the sub-title sets forth the 
"intemperance of the climates, excessive heat and 
cold, and sudden violent changes, terrible murderous 
thunder and lightnings, bad and unwholesome air de- 
structive to human bodies, badness of money, danger 
from enemies, but above all to the souls of the poor 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 07 

people that remove thither from the multifarious pes- 
tilent heresies of those parts, published as a caution 
to unsteady people who may be tempted to leave their 
native country/' 

For half a century the rector of St. Michael's, 
Bristol, E. I., was the Eev. John Usher of the Har- 
vard class of 1719. His son, whose baptism is the 
first recorded act of the father upon his entrance into 
his charge, was graduated from Harvard in 1743, and 
though a lawyer, when his father died, as no clergy- 
man was at hand, he assembled the scattered congre- 
gation and held together the parish. He officiated 
as lay reader many years, until at the age of seventy- 
one he received Holy Orders from the first American 
Bishop, and continued in the parish which was so 
truly his for God's cause, working there always with 
great piety and untired devotion to the Church. 

Henry Caner was a student at Yale College, where 
Eector Cutler made his declaration for the Church, 
and the seed of his courage and devotion to truth fell 
on good soil in the youth, who, immediately after 
graduation, began to read the Church service at Fair- 
field. When he had obtained Orders, he was ap- 
pointed by the S. P. G. missionary to this same town, 
where he worked faithfully, winning many to the 
Church, until he was called to King's Chapel, the 
leading parish of N~ew England. Here, also, under 
his ministry the Church gained greatly in numbers 



& 



08 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

and in honor, while he gained the deep affection of 
his parishioners and the townspeople in general. 

The Rev. Arthur Browne, who was ordained by 
the Bishop of London in 1T29, was first sent to 
King's Chapel, now St. John's Church, Providence, 
and afterward gave thirty-seven years of service to 
St. John's parish, Portsmouth, where he was honored 
and beloved. 

The Rev. Thomas Cradock, who left all in the 
home country to go to a frontier post in the Maryland 
wilderness, even after his limbs were helpless by dis- 
ease, was carried regularly to church, and, set in his 
accustomed place, officiated at the services. 

The Rev. Thomas Bacon, another Maryland mis- 
sionary, labored zealously for the poor colored folk 
of the colony, saying that he found them as sheep 
without a shepherd, living in ignorance of Chris- 
tianity., and considered them a part of the flock which 
God had placed under his care. He taught them by 
friendly conversation and advice when he met them 
on the way, and had services for them, and visited 
them in sickness. This faithful priest also sought to 
educate and improve the condition of the poor white 
people, and, securing the aid of friends, he estab- 
lished a free school, the brick building of which is 
still standing, a memorial of the Christian charity of 
the good missionary. 

To Georgia the ardent young missionary, John 




REV. JOHN WESLEY. 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 68 

Wesley, was sent, to minister to the spiritual needs 
of the colony, speeded on his way by the prayers of 
his devout widowed mother, who said, "Had I twenty 
sons, I should rejoice to have them all missionaries, 
though I should never see them again." 

John Wesley and his brother Charles set sail, be- 
ginning the voyage with prayers and the Sacrament. 
and saying that their whole motive in going was the 
glory of God. On Quinquagesima Sunday, March 
7, 1736, Mr. Wesley began his ministrations in Sa- 
vannah, establishing many Church services in Eng- 
lish. German, French, and Italian, that he might 
reach the people of various nationalities, and studying 
Spanish that he might converse with the Jews of the 
town. Also he walked many miles through swamp> 
and thickets to distant plantations, in order to min- 
ister to their inhabitants, often on these journeys ly- 
ing all night out-of-doors, exposed to storms and des- 
titute of food. He taught the children of his flock 
to read and write, and catechised them twice a day. 
and on Sundays in public before the congregation. 

In later years, the Rev. John Wesley and his 
brother gathered about themselves a new and inde- 
pendent religious society, but we are glad to remem- 
ber that it was as sons of the Church that they did 
their first missionary work in America ; and John 
Wesley, when a very old man. declared that he was 
and had always been a child of the Church of Eng- 
land, 



70 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

Another Georgia missionary sent out by the 
S. P. G. was the Eev. George Whitefield, who also 
joined a new religious body later, but who began his 
missionary work as a minister of the Church of Eng- 
land. He was a famous preacher, who drew great 
crowds and touched the hearts of all who heard him ; 
yet this young man, before whom great honors seemed 
to lie in England, turned aside from all these to min- 
ister to a few colonists on the edge of the great wilder- 
ness in America. 

It was a fair May day, Eogation Sunday in 1738, 
when Whitefield came to the Church in Savannah, 
warmly welcomed by the people, who were glad to 
have a pastor once more. On the next day, he began 
to read "Publick Prayers and to expound the Second 
Lesson"; and, in a few weeks, he was preaching to 
large congregations, visiting from house to house, 
catechising and teaching, and gaining, by his faith- 
fulness and devotion, happy results for the Church 
in Georgia. 

By unwearied efforts he collected more than a 
thousand pounds, and also secured a grant of five 
hundred acres of land for an orphans' home which he 
longed to found. The orphans were at first sheltered 
in a temporary building, and together with these, the 
children of the colonists were gathered for free in- 
struction, while an infirmary was established wherein 
the sick were cared for without charge. On the Feast 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 71 

of the Annunciation, 1740, the first brick of "Great 
House" was laid, and "with assurance of faith, the 
home was called Bethesda, in the hope that that 
might be a house of mercy to many, whose founda- 
tion was laid in Georgia in the name of our dear 
Jesus." 

In this old-time missionary school the children 
were aroused by a bell ringing at sunrise, and in their 
sleeping rooms they prayed and sang a hymn, then 
went downstairs to bathe, and then, at the call of the 
bell, to go to public worship. After breakfast came 
work in the trade-schools, or lessons, and more pray- 
ers. Before and after dinner the children sang a 
hymn, and they had a recreation hour before after- 
noon school, which was followed by public prayers 
and supper. At bedtime the little pupils went to 
their rooms attended by the teachers, who prayed 
privately with them. On Sundays all dined on 
cold meat, prepared the day before, in order that 
none should be kept from public worship, which was 
attended four times, the children "between-whiles 
spending the time in reading." 

So, in these old days in Georgia, good missionary 
work was done for poor and ignorant children and 
for the sick, beside that work which is the mission- 
ary's first care — the ministering to the spiritual needs 
of the people. 



IX. 

The Church and the Nation. 

The history of the Church in the United States 
is closely bound up with the history of the nation. 
We have seen how many of the original settlements 
were distinctively Church colonies and how the first 
representative Congress met in the first church at 
Jamestown. When, in 1699, the seat of government 
was removed to Williamsburg, where the House of 
Burgesses met, Brixton. Church became the court 
church of colonial Virginia, and a part of it was 
built with public money by the House of Burgesses. 
There the Governor, his Council, and the House of 
Burgesses attended Divine service, the Governor occu- 
pying his elevated pew, canopied with gold-em- 
broidered red silk. The present Brixton Church was 
built in 1715, and contains, among other articles 
brought from Jamestown it is believed, the baptismal 
font, the first in the United States. This old church 
has been restored, and in the work Massachusetts 
and Virginia clasped hands, as in the old days 
of the Eevolution, when John Adams, a Massachu- 
setts man, urged that Washington, a Virginia man, 




AN HISTORIC FONT. 

[Presented by George III. to St. Andrew's 

Church. Mount Holly. N. J. Now in use 

at Christ Church. Columbus. Ky.] 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 73 

should be chosen for the chief post in the great 
struggle. King Edward of England gave a memorial 
Bible, made under the direction of the Archbishop 
of Canterbury, and which rests upon a lectern given 
by President Roosevelt to the restored church. The 
Bishop of London was invited to preach the conse- 
cration sermon, because, when the church was built, 
all colonial churches were in the care of the Bishop 
of London. 

In this church worshipped five of our Presidents. 
when they were students at the College of William 
and Mary, or members of the House of Burgesses : 
Washington, whose name appears eleven times in the 
parish register; Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and 
Tyler. Here also worshipped Chief Justice Marshall. 
Patrick Henry, Eandolph, Benjamin Harrison, the 
Lees, and General Winfield Scott. 

The very constitutions of the Church and of the 
country were "rocked in the same cradle," for, in the 
same year, 1789, and in the same state-house at Phila- 
delphia, called the "Cradle of Liberty," were ratified 
the Constitution of the United States and that of the 
Church, now independent of England; and many of 
the same men were in both conventions. Thirty-four 
of the fifty-five signers of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence were Churchmen, and perhaps for this rea- 
son the organization of the Church and the nation 
are very similar. In the Church are the Bishops, the 



74 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

Cathedral, the House of Bishops, and House of Depu- 
ties, while, corresponding to these in the State, are 
the Governor, the State-house, the Senate, and House 
of Kepresentatives. The nation is a group of states 
welded into a union, and the Church is a group of 
dioceses welded together; and the Church has ever 
given noble help in establishing, organizing, and pre- 
serving the United States. So, if we are worthy the 
inheritance we have received in both our Church and 
our nation, and if we faithfully exercise our privilege 
of membership in both, we shall have a spirit of deep 
gratitude to the self-sacrificing fathers of our country 
and our Church, and to God who has graciously given 
increase to their labors; and thankful as Churchmen 
that the early settlers planted in this dear land the 
precious seed of the Church, we shall -rejoice to join 
in the great offerings which are to extend in other 
lands this same Church, first established in this 
continent by the Jamestown colonists. 

During the Eevolution, Patrick Henry, General 
Harry Lee, Eandolph, the Morrises, Pinckney, Liv- 
ingston, and many others whose names rang through 
two continents, were working, planning, and praying 
in the Church which gave so many high-souled 
leaders to the American side in the great struggle. 
And General Washington, baptized in the Church, 
and a devout communicant, prepared himself for the 
almost crushing burdens of his high position by seek- 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 75 

ing the strength of God in His Church. In the year 
of the battles of Concord and Bunker Hill, just be- 
fore Washington went to Massachusetts to take com- 
mand of the colonial army, he made this entry in his 
diary: "Williamsburg, June 1, 1775. Went to 
church and fasted all day." And throughout the 
struggle Washington was ever true to his Church. 
Some of us have looked with awe and reverence at 
the very places where he knelt, humbly seeking wis- 
dom from God in many parish churches of the land ; 
in Christ Church, Cambridge, where he worshipped 
at the beginning of the years of stress; St. John's, 
Portsmouth; Trinity, Newport; Christ Church, 
Philadelphia, and others in the Middle and Southern 
states, besides the old Bruton church and the home 
church of his later years in Alexandria, where he was 
churchwarden and vestryman, chosen as being one of 
the "twelve most able and discreet men of the par- 
ish." 

Many of the Church clergymen took the American 
side in the great struggle. The Eev. Henry Purcell 
of South Carolina became the chaplain of a regiment ; 
the Eev. Eobert Smith (afterward first Bishop of 
South Carolina) served as a soldier in the American 
ranks; Dr. Muhlenberg donned a soldier's uniform, 
and putting his gown over it, preached an earnest 
sermon on the duty of the hour, then, laying off his 
gown, marched out of church, stood at the door as a 



76 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

recruiting sergeant, and enlisted a battalion of con- 
tinental troops on the spot. Dr. Provoost of New 
York was an ardent patriot, and Dr. White (after- 
ward Bishop White) became chaplain of the Conti- 
nental Congress. 

At the first meeting of the Continental Congress, 
Peyton Kandolph, a Churchman, was chosen presi- 
dent, and Samuel Adams, who was an opponent of 
the Church, yet made the motion that the inaugura- 
tion of the cause of the colonies should be by the use 
of the prayers of the Church. Mr. Duche, a minister 
of Christ Church, Philadelphia, preached a patriotic 
sermon, said the prayers of the Church, at which it 
is said the noble Washington alone knelt, and read 
the service for that day, a solemn memory day, Sep- 
tember 7th, including the thirty-fifth Psalm, with its 
earnest appeal so suited to the time: "Plead Thou 
my cause, God." 

On June 23, 1775, Dr. Smith (animated as he 
was by the purest zeal for interests of both England 
and the colonies) preached in Christ church, Philadel- 
phia, before the Congress and the militia, a thought- 
ful sermon which made a remarkable impression on 
the civilized world, being translated into several for- 
eign languages, and printed in an edition of 10,000 
copies at the expense of the Chamberlain of London. 

Shoulder to shoulder with the clergy, many lay- 
men, some of the Church, took part in the American 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 77 

cause, like the brave, energetic Captain Blackler, a 
parishioner of St. Michael's, Marblehead, who, ac- 
companied by his strong Marblehead sailors, com- 
manded the boat in which, on that bitter December 
night when the cause of the suffering Americans was 
at its lowest point, General Washington crossed the 
icy Delaware river to fight the battle of Trenton. 

Through the eight terrible years of war, the 
prayers and sacraments of the Church endured, and, 
when in 1783 the new nation stood on the threshold 
of its life, Washington, the father of the young coun- 
try, knelt to thank God and to seek new grace for 
new needs in the old Church in whose communion he 
both lived and died. 

After the separation from England, when public 
prayers for the king might no longer be said, the 
Americans, having no Prayer Books but those of the 
Church of England, quietly pasted over the prayers 
for the king and royal family a sheet on which were 
printed prayers for the President of the United 
States. Many of these remodelled pages may be seen 
in the huge leather-bound Prayer Books of the colo- 
nial churches from St. John's, Portsmouth, and 
Christ Church, Boston, southward. But as soon as 
was possible the English Prayer Book was altered to 
suit the changed circumstances of this country, while 
it was left entirely unchanged in all essential points 
of "doctrine, discipline, and worship/' and in these it 



78 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

still remains unchanged to this very year of memory 
days which connect our Church in America with its 
own true Mother Church in England. 

And now Christianity is a part of the land. In 
the Constitution we read : "Done in the year of our 
Lord" ; and so the United States dates the ratification 
of its form of government from the coming of Christ 
and declares Him to be the Lord of the nation. Also, 
in the Constitution, the observance of Sunday is di- 
rected by Congress and the Supreme Court of the 
land. By a law of the Congress of the year 1800, 
the government maintains chaplains for the army and 
the navy; commanders in the navy are ordered to 
have divine worship conducted in a solemn manner 
twice daily, and to have a sermon preached on Sun- 
day ; all possible of the ship's company are obliged to 
attend public worship, and there are laws providing 
for the punishment of any irreverence at service. 
Also, the cadets of the military and naval academies 
are obliged to attend divine service, and chaplains 
are appointed for both Houses of Congress. When 
Michigan was a United States territory it was pro- 
vided that in it the first day of the week should be 
observed as a day of rest. 

In many of the States of the Union, the Christian 
Faith is still further recognized. In Massachusetts, 
certain legal provisions were long ago made for the 
reason that "these tend to the honor of God and the 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 70 

advantage of the Christian religion." In North Caro- 
lina, an old law decrees that "no person who denies 
the religious truths or the divine authority of the Old 
and New Testament shall hold office in civil depart- 
ments of the State"; and many of the States have 
stringent laws in regard to Sunday. 

While our country thus remembers and honors the 
Christian religion, and the God who is the Lord of 
the Church, the Church constantly in prayer and 
thanksgiving remembers our country. Daily the 
Church prays for God's blessing on the President of 
the United States, the Governor of the State 
and all others in authority; she prays for the 
country in time of sickness and war and tumult, for 
the "harvest and labors of the husbandman," for per- 
sons going to sea, including — or perhaps mainly 
meaning — the men of our navy, since the prayer asks 
deliverance from the "Violence of enemies." She 
thanks God for deliverance from our enemies, and 
for "restoring public peace at home"; and in the 
daily service of Prayer at Sea, she prays not only for 
the safety of the ships' crews and the fleet in which 
they serve, but also that these may be a "safeguard 
unto the United States of America, and that all the 
inhabitants of our land may in peace and quietness 
serve God." She prays for God's mercy in time of 
stoiins at sea, and His defence against the enemy be- 
fore a fight ; she praises Him for deliverance from the 



SO SOME MEMORY DAYS 

tempest and after victories, declaring that "the Lord 
hath done great things for us"; and she beseeches 
that God will give the nation "grace to improve this 
great mercy to His glory, the advancement of His 
Gospel, the honor of our country, and the good of all 
mankind." 

Thus divine blessings are daily sought for the 
country by the prayers of the Church in the United 
States in all her holy places from ocean to ocean, and 
in every ship that carries with the starry banner of 
the nation our fathers founded in this land the 
Prayer Book of the Church that the same fathers 
planted on these shores. 



The First Bishops. 

The Church was planted in America, and devoted 
and self-sacrificing missionaries, clergymen and lay- 
men, were working zealously and lovingly to spread 
the faith, but there were no chief shepherds of God's 
flock in the new Church. As early as 1716 a mis- 
sionary to America wrote to a friend in England : 
"The poor Church of God here in the wilderness ! 
There is none to guide her," In 1718 some of the 
American clergy sent a petition to the S. P. G., saying 
that, "for want of the episcopacy and because there 
has never been any Bishop sent to visit us, our 
churches remain unconsecrated, our children are 
grown up and cannot be confirmed, and for want of 
the sacred power the vacancies in the ministry cannot 
be supplied." In 1724 the Eev. Samuel Johnson of 
Stratford, Conn., urged the Bishop of London to ap- 
point a Bishop for America, because the young men 
here could have the divine grace of ordination only 
by crossing the seas "with all their dangers, and/' 
he continued, "'many thousands of souls do patiently 



82 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

long and pray for Bishops and for want of them do 
extremely suffer/ 5 

But this cry of the American Church received no 
answer until the long war of the Eevolution was 
ended; then, among the first fruits of the happy 
peace, the Church "sprang up with beauty/' arising 
to new life with the gift of the episcopate. And one 
of our memory days is the Feast of the iinnunciation, 
1783, when ten clergymen, feeling deeply the need of 
Bishops to minister to the now feeble and scattered 
Church in the United States, met in the quiet village 
of Woodbury, Conn., at the house of the Eev. John 
Marshall, the rector of Woodbury, and a missionary 
of the S. P. G., and selected two men, the Eev. Jere- 
miah Learning and the Eev. Samuel Seabury, as suit- 
able to go to England, to obtain, if possible, conse- 
cration. 

Mr. Learning, weary and worn by long services to 
the Church, and weakened by age and infirmities, 
shrank from the burden, and so it was ordered by 
God that Mr. Seabury, simple, grand, conciliatory, 
and uncompromising, a man of boldness, zeal, and 
unflinching adherence to truth, should be the man to 
seek the apostolic order in England. Provided with 
letters from prominent clergymen to the Archbishop 
of Canterbury, pleading America's need of Bishops, 
Mr. Seabury, embarking his entire property in the 
enterprise, set sail for England in the flagship of 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 8:} 

Admiral Digby, while behind him in America the 
Church prayed earnestly that God would keep him 
under His protection and conduct him in safety to 
his desired end. Dr. Seabury arrived in London on 
July 7, 1783; but he sought in vain to obtain there 
the precious gift of the Apostolic Succession for the 
struggling Church in America; for certain political 
reasons, the boon was denied. So the zealous and 
kind-hearted Dr. George Berkeley and other friends 
of the American Church urged the Bishops in Scot- 
land to consecrate Mr. Seabury, and after long de- 
liberation these consented, one of them writing, "I do 
not see how we can account to our Lord and Master 
if we neglect such an opportunity of promoting His 
truth and enlarging the borders of His Church/' 

Because the Church in Scotland up to that time 
had refused to disown the royal House of Stuart and 
give allegiance to the House of Hanover, she had 
been forbidden to hold service except in private dwell- 
ings; hence, Bishop Skinner of Aberdeen had found 
a retired spot in a narrow close (alley) and there 
rented a house, the upper floor of which was a chapel. 
This is a place of precious memory to the American 
Church, for in that humble chapel, on the Twenty- 
second Sunday after Trinity, November 14, 1784, by 
Bishop Kilgour, the Primus of Scotland, assisted by 
Bishops Petrie and Skinner, Samuel Seabury, in the 
presence of a large number of persons, both clergy 



84 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

and laity, was consecrated to be the first Bishop of 
the Church in America. Solemnly the congregation 
prayer God "to keep His household the Church in 
continual godliness; that through His protection it 
might be free from all adversities, and devoutly given 
to serve Him in good works, to the glory of His 
name," and fervently they sang the impressive words 
of the nineteenth psalm : 

"To all Thy servants, Lord, let this 

Thy wondrous work be known, 
And to our offspring yet unborn 

Thy glorious power be shown. 
Let Thy bright rays upon us shine. 

Give Thou our work success; 
This glorious work we have in hand. 

Do Thou vouchsafe to bless." 

Deep and holy interest in this consecration was 
felt, and many blessings were invoked upon the new 
Bishop and his work by the members of the Church 
in Scotland, that "small branch of the true Yine to 
which God's Providence had given the power of trans- 
planting to the vast vineyard of the West a shoot 
which should fill the land." 

Like the Church in America, the Scottish Church 
stood for earnest convictions and sacrifices, and it re- 
garded the episcopal order not on the temporal side, 
but on the spiritual. Its clergy, as one said, had 
"ventured for a long time to show more regard to the 
Acts of the Apostles than to the acts of Parliament." 
So the Church in America is closely bound together 




BISHOP SEABURY. 
[First American Bishop.] 



OF THE CHURCH IX AMERICA 85 

with this free and spiritual Church in Scotland, to 
which the Connecticut clergy sent an address of 
thanks, containing these words: "Wherever the 
American Episcopal Church shall be mentioned in 
the world, may this good deed which they have done 
for us be spoken of for a memorial of them." 

After a wearisome homeward voyage of three 
months, Bishop Seabury arrived in Newport on June 
20, 1785, and on the next Sunday he preached in old 
Trinity church the first sermon ever preached in this 
land by an American Bishop. His text was Hebrews 
xii. 1 : "Seeing we are compassed about with so great 
a cloud of witnesses — let us run with patience the 
race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the au- 
thor and finisher of our faith." 

It was granted to the Bishop to be greatly blessed 
in the "race set before him," and to see the Church 
in America united and firmly settled on the founda- 
tions of the apostles. 

In August, 1785, the first diocesan convention of 
Connecticut met at Middletown, and acknowledged 
Bishop Seabury as the ecclesiastical head ; and he sat 
in his chair before the clergy, while one of these read 
a formal recognition, thanking God "that He at last 
permitted the Church in America to enjoy the long- 
desired blessing of a pure, valid, and free episcopacy," 
and declaring, "'in the presence of Almighty God, that 
they acknowledged Dr. Seabury as their Bishop, sm- 



86 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

preme in the government of the Church; also, they 
thanked the Scotch Bishops," faithful holders of the 
apostolic commission, who gave freely that which 
they had freely received. The Bishop then celebrated 
Holy Communion, ordained four deacons, and gave 
the congregation the apostolic blessing. 

A truly memorable day was that, August 3, 1785; 
and on the following day the new Bishop gave his 
first charge to his clergy, reminding them that they 
were to use the precious gift that they had received 
for the glory of God and the good of His Church, and 
urging them to teach the nature and meaning of con- 
firmation and its benefits, for hitherto the members 
of the American Church had remained unconfirmed 
for want of a Bishop. 

Thus Bishop Seabury began the noble apostolic 
work in which he continued many years, taking jour- 
neys, long and hard in those days, by boat or on horse- 
back, over rough, hilly roads, going throughout New 
England, ordaining clergymen and administering con- 
firmation to great numbers. On one summer Sunday 
in 1791 he confirmed seventy-two persons in old St. 
John's church, Portsmouth, and a few days later he 
gave to thirty-three more the gift of the Holy Spirit, 
beside ordaining the Rev. Eobert Towle, the first 
priest to be ordained in this part of the country. A 
few days afterward he preached in Newburyport, to 
a congregation of two thousand persons, and con- 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 87 

firmed a hundred persons. As the Bishop travelled, 
he gained much influence among the people by his 
readiness to use for their benefit his knowledge of 
medicine and of new discoveries in science. A story 
of him which was widely circulated and which added 
much to his popularity is that of a certain hot sum- 
mer day, when he was sailing on a packet to Xew 
York, and some of his fellow-passengers were sighing 
for a cool drink. The Bishop hung up a covered jug 
of the lukewarm water of the boat, and dashed fresh 
water over and over it. "What is the foolish man up 
to?" whispered a youngster. The Bishop continued 
his work, and after a time poured water from the 
jug and gave it to his companions, who to their sur- 
prise found it cool and refreshing. "You see," he 
said quietly to the lad, "I am no fool and you are no 
philosopher." 

Bishop Seabuiys one great desire was to promote 
the cause of Christ's Church and of pure religion, 
and for this cause he was ready to yield his own 
opinions in non-essentials; but he was firmly fixed 
in all vital matters, and in his generous, self-sacrific- 
ing life, he lived not only as a faithful Christian 
Bishop but also as a true friend of the people. 

Now, in these days, God had given to one of His 
servants the special gifts needed at this critical time 
in America, and the name of William White, of 
Philadelphia, will always be gratefully remembered 



88 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

by our Church of the West. Dr. White was a man 
mild in manner, meek in spirit, tolerant of others, 
a peacemaker, and so kind and gentle that men would 
hear from him what they would not from another, 
an advantage which he used for the good of the 
Church. He was humble, trusting in his Eedeemer 
and seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit; and 
through a long life he never shrank from any known 
duty. When the yellow fever appeared in Philadel- 
phia, three-quarters of the terror-stricken inhabitants 
fled from the city, but Dr. White remained with the 
sick and dying, spending with them his days and 
nights, for, "where," said he, "should a pastor be 
but with his suffering flock?" And long afterward, 
when he was an old man of eighty-five, and Phila- 
delphia was smitten with Asiatic cholera, the aged 
shepherd of his people was seen daily in the hos- 
pitals, praying at the bedside of the dying. With 
gentle manners, love for his fellows, and respect for 
their ojDinions, he lived without an enemy. 

At the beginning of the Eevolution, Dr. White, 
from the conviction of his conscience, took the Amer- 
ican side and became chaplain of Congress, and the 
end of the war found him the rector of St. Peter's 
Church in Philadelphia, and of Christ Church, where 
General Washington worshipped. 

This good man used his influence in gathering 
together, in 1785 and 1786, an assembly of the 
Church composed of delegates from seven of the 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 89 

thirteen states, who urged that every effort should 
be made to obtain more Bishops, securing the apos- 
tolic order, if possible, from the English Church. 
It was decided that Dr. White, of Pennsylvania, 
and Dr. Provoost, of New York, a man strong in 
the Faith and fearless, should be recommended to 
the Archbishop of Canterbury for consecration, and 
these chosen men sailed in 1786 for England, arriv- 
ing in London on Xovember 29th. 

The petition of the American Church to the 
Archbishop of Canterbury had been presented in 
person by the American Minister to England, Mr. 
John Adams, who, though not himself a Churchman, 
bravely and generously gave great aid to the Church, 
and who is therefore to be held in grateful memory 
by us all. Mr. Adams presented Dr. White and Dr. 
Provoost to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who re- 
ceived them cordially, as also did the king. 

Matters in England had changed somewhat since 
Dr. Seabury was consecrated in Scotland, and it is 
also believed that the English Church was deeply 
influenced by the action of the Scottish Church in 
giving freely to America the gift of the Apostolic 
Succession, and the English Bishops now agreed to 
grant the request of the American Church. So, on 
a glad memory Sunday, February 4, 1787, in the 
chapel of Lambeth Palace, by the Archbishops of 
Canterbury and York and the Bishops of Bath and 
Wells and Peterborough, the two Americans were 



90 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

consecrated, and the Mother Church of England gave 
to her daughter Church the great and greatly needed 
gift of the Apostolic Succession. It is interesting 
to remember that in the congregation at Lambeth 
Chapel on that February Sunday was the Eev. Mr. 
Duche, who had years before said the first prayer in 
the first American Congress, and who, though long- 
ago returned to live in England, had always loved 
and worked for the American Church. 

Then, rejoicing, the two newly consecrated Bish- 
ops went back to their own land, carrying the office 
of the first apostles. Solemnly glad was their land- 
ing on Easter Day, April 7, 1787, coming as they 
did as special witnesses of the Eesurrection, the joy- 
ful memory of which the Church throughout all the 
world was that day keeping. 

It was an important day for the Church in 
America when, on July 28, 1789, its representatives 
met in General Convention in Philadelphia, for the 
first time gathering as when of old the "apostles and 
elders came together at Jerusalem," for now as then 
the Church met with Bishops, presbyters, deacons, 
and the laity, "the multitude of the faithful." In 
this convention and in its adjourned session, together 
with much other important work, our Prayer Book 
was established practically as we now have it, ful- 
filling its profession that the "Church in America is 
far from intending to depart from the Church of 




BISHOP WHITE OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 91 

England in any essential point of doctrine, disci- 
pline, or worship." 

In 1790 Dr. Madison was elected Bishop of Vir- 
ginia and was consecrated in England ; thus one hun- 
dred and eighty-four years after her first planting, 
Virginia had her own Bishop. 

On the memory day, September 17, 1792, took 
place the first American consecration of a Bishop for 
Maryland, Dr. Claggett, upon whom were laid the 
apostolic hands of all the American Bishops, Bishops 
Seabury, White, Provoost, and Madison. So at last 
the Church in America was complete in all her func- 
tions and powers, and able to expand as God might 
give grace and opportunity, to meet the ever-increas- 
ing needs of the young but rapidly growing Eepublic 
of the West. 



XL 

The Advance. 

At the close of the eighteenth century, the 
Church in the young Eepublic at last was firmly 
established under the care of its own chief shep- 
herds, the Bishops who had received their commis- 
sion in the line of the apostles; and the tree from 
the seed planted at Jamestown was growing in the 
thirteen states, at the mouth of the great rivers 
along the Atlantic shore. But the country was al- 
ready beginning to widen its boundaries. There was 
activity on the frontier where the roads ended and 
the axe had but begun its work, leaving huge stumps 
standing in their native soil around the rude log huts 
of the settlers, on the border of the great wilder- 
ness with its unending shadows, wild animals, and 
wild Indians. Constantly the black line of the for- 
est was moving away from the ocean shore toward 
the sunset. In this border-land, where the bold fron- 
tiermen were building up their homes and their 
nation, the claims and comforts of religion were 
often forgotten; in the lonely settlements no church- 
spire pointed toward heaven, and no calling bells 
reminded men of prayer and praise; the children of 




BISIIOr HOBAKT. 
[New York.] 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 93 

these homes grew up unbaptized and with no knowl- 
edge of God or faith in Christ. 

Over this matter the hearts of faithful men were 
stirred, and especially good Bishop Hobart, of New 
York, filled with love for souls, felt the pressing need 
of the people on the frontier, and urged the Church 
to send laborers to plant in these new lands the 
knowledge of Christ and the sacraments of His grace. 
Men heard and obeyed this call ; but often it was the 
humble, faithful lay-worker who first went to the 
frontier to prepare the way for the Church. Among 
these devoted men was one who bore the honored 
memory name, Samuel Gunn. He was a Connecti- 
cut man, baptized by a missionary of the S. P. G., 
and one of the first to receive from Bishop Seabury 
the blessing of Confirmation. As the town in which 
Mr. Gunn lived had no clergyman, the Bishop, notic- 
ing his holy life, appointed him lay-reader to a small 
band of earnest Christians who worshipped God ac- 
cording to the service of the old Church. Xow and 
then a priest visited the people to administer the 
sacraments; but for years they depended principally 
upon Samuel Gunn for their religious teaching and 
inspiration. After a time Mr. Gunn with his family 
moved away to the then distant land of Western Xew 
York, and in his new home he gathered together so 
many worshippers that they soon formed a parish 
and called a minister. 

In 1805 Mr. Gunn removed still farther west. 



94 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

In this journey through the great wilderness, one of 
his children was suddenly taken from him, and the 
little body was laid away to sleep in the silence of 
the deep forest until the Eesurrection morning. 
With his family and his goods, Mr. Gunn floated 
down the Ohio River, then a wild and little known 
river, until he came to a place settled by a dozen 
families. Then began the prayers and praise of the 
Church on the banks of the Ohio, where a little band 
of worshippers gathered with Mr. Gunn. 

The good man was filled with joy when, in 1819, 
he heard that Ohio had been made a diocese and 
that its new Bishop was the very missionary who 
had often been in his home in New York. He wrote 
to Bishop Chase of his needy little flock at Ports- 
mouth, to which a clergyman was sent, while soon 
the Bishop himself came to the company, upon whom 
his simple piety made a deep impression. The Bishop 
organized a parish here, making Mr. Gunn the senior 
warden, and leaving him still the lay-reader, in 
which office he was now greatly assisted by the dis- 
covery of a number of Prayer Books that had long 
been lying unregarded on a dusty shelf of the village 
store, but now were in such demand that the people, 
who had little money, paid twenty bushels of corn for 
a single copy. In 1831 a room was fitted up for the 
worship of God, and the aged lay-reader handed over 
his work to a clergyman. He urged his neigh- 
bors to build a church, toward which he gave one- 




BISHOP PHILANDER CHASE. 
[Pioneer Missionary in Ohio and Illinois.] 



OF THE CHURCH TX AMERICA 95 

third of his whole little property; but before 
this sacred church was built, the faithful pioneer- 
missionary was received by the Master whom he had 
long served into the peace of the Church at Eest. 

Dr. Chase, the first Bishop of Ohio, was himself 
the son of parents who were pioneers when the fron- 
tier was farther east and had the Connecticut for 
its boundary. He had intended to spend his life on 
the farm of his parents, but God planned for him 
another career to which he was called, at first, by the 
path of pain from a maimed and broken limb, which 
shut him out from the active life and led to his go- 
ing to college. There he first saw the Prayer Book, 
which w T on him by its showing of the sure claims of 
the Apostolic Commission and by its spiritual tone, 
and he went back to the farm on the Connecticut 
Biver to lead his old father into the Church. With 
their own hands the old man and the young man 
built a little house of worship, to which they wel- 
comed their neighbors on the occasional visits of a 
priest from a distance, and in which Philander Chase, 
as layman, read prayers and sermons. The youth's 
heart was set upon the ministry, but how could he 
obtain education and ordination? There were no 
theological seminaries in the land, and there was no 
Bishop near to direct him. With hesitation, Chase 
set out for Albany to seek there the guidance of the 
Bev. Mr. Ellison, who received the country boy with 



00 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

a hearty "God bless you," and settled him in his 
vocation. 

In 1798 Mr. Chase was ordained deacon by 
Bishop Provoost, of New York, and sent as home 
missionary to the forest district in the western part 
of that state. Here, among the immigrants on the 
outskirts, he labored with his whole heart, thinking 
nothing of the privations of the rough life, ready to 
live in a cabin of unhewn logs, with scarce a pane 
of glass to let in light enough to read his Bible, but 
he soon had the joy of seeing large congregations 
gather for worship. 

At the advice of his Bishop, he went for a time 
to New Orleans, where he formed the first parish of 
the English Church in that city; then, after serving 
the Church in Hartford, where he was much loved, 
his thoughts turned again to the lonely clearings and 
the rude villages of the new West, and he set out 
for missionary work in Ohio, where settlements were 
beginning to straggle through the wilderness. Other 
clergymen went to his aid; the diocese of Ohio was 
organized; he was chosen Bishop, and on a memory 
day of the American Church, in February, 1819, he 
was consecrated in Philadelphia by good old Bishop 
White and three other American Bishops, and be- 
came the first Bishop of the great advance of the 
American Church. 

Bishop Chase, though now a leader, was still the 
self-sacrificing missionary, and from his rude log- 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 07 

cabin home, the first "Episcopal palace" of Ohio, 
he travelled hundreds of miles yearly, through burn- 
ing suns and drenching rains, visiting his scattered 
flock. Meantime, he lived in great poverty, cutting 
and hauling his own wood and thrashing his grain. 
The ignorance and wickedness of the settlements 
pressed heavily on him, and by great efforts he col- 
lected from friends of the work money to buy land, 
on which he built Kenyon College and the village 
of Gambier. Eising at three o'clock in the morning, 
he directed the work himself, and soon had students 
gathered in his college. 

The young men were trained for the especial work 
of missionaries for the West. They rose very early, 
and, provided with books and simple food, they went 
out silently through the ancient forest of tall trees, 
oak, hickory, maple, sycamore, walnut, chestnut, with 
the wild vine gracefully festooned over their branches. 
They passed clearings where cattle fed upon the rich 
grass about a log-cabin; passed the rude mill upon a 
stream, stopping to talk with the miller and interest 
him in the Church and accept his loan of a horse 
to help them on, and in another hour came to a log- 
cabin village with a schoolhouse, around which was 
built a rustic arbor of green branches. Here the 
village children were gathered, with now and then 
their parents. The student missionaries gave out a 
hymn and knelt to pray, repeating the service from 
memory, with a regard for the untrained people who 



08 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

would turn away if they saw a Prayer Book; and 
then, after instructing the children, the teachers 
would begin their journey home, unless, as some- 
times happened, a poor man would beg them to tell 
him more about the Church, and would take them 
to his cabin and give them a good dinner of chicken, 
hot bread, apple-pie, and milk. 

On their homeward way, they would find waiting, 
under a great tree by a stream, another congrega- 
tion, and there in the forest would be said the same 
pra3^ers of the Church which were being said in the 
grand minsters of England. One place of worship 
was an orchard with its apple and peach blossoms 
filling the air with perfume, and with the Com- 
munion Table in its snowy linen standing on the 
green grass beneath the trees. After their long day 
of missionary work, the weary students walked home 
through the dark shadows of the woods in which the 
little lamps of the fireflies glistened. In this way 
the Gospel reached the lonely homes of the pioneers, 
and by and by straggling parishes and a great, though 
poor, diocese w r ere formed. 

Meantime, work was begun among the Indians. 
In 1815 the attention of Bishop Hobart was called 
to the Oneidas, of whom four thousand were settled 
on a reservation in New York. The Bishop, trying 
to find a man to go to them in a spirit of Christian 
love, was guided to one of their own blood, Eleazar 
Williams, who had received a Christian education and 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 00 

could speak to his people in their own tongue. Years 
before, in an attack of the Indians on the Massa- 
chusetts village, Deerfield, they had carried away the 
wife and children of the minister. One of the daugh- 
ters married an Indian, and it was her son who was 
now to carry the good news of God to his own 
brethren of the forest, going first as a teacher and 
carrying the Gospels and Psalms translated into the 
Oneida tongue. 

God gave great blessings to his labors, as we may 
see from some letters sent to the Bishop by a Chris- 
tian Indian. "Eight Eeverend Father/' he wrote, 
"we rejoice and give thanks for the favor you have 
bestowed on our nation in sending Brother Williams 
to instruct us in the religion of the blessed Jesus. 
He shall remain in our hearts so long as he shall 
teach us the ways of the Great Spirit above. A great 
light has risen on us; we see that the Christian re- 
ligion is intended for the good of the Indians as 
well as the white people, and we feel that the re- 
ligion of the Gospel will make us happy in this world 
and in the world to come. We have assisted our 
Brother all that was in our power; you know he has 
lived very poor, and we wish to do something for 
him, but we cannot now, for we have just raised be- 
tween three and four thousand dollars for a little 
chapel. We intreat you as the head of the holy 
apostolic Church in this state to take special charge 



100 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

of us; we are ignorant, mean, and poor, and need 
your assistance." 

In 1818 Bishop Hobart made his first visit to 
his Indian children in their home of open pastures 
and deep forests, where there were no roads except 
narrow paths, and where the rude but sometimes 
neat houses were scattered about in the full sunshine 
or in the shades of the woods. With those who 
flocked about their Bishop came one old Mohawk 
warrior, who, among heathen companions for fifty 
years, had been true to the Christian faith in which 
he had been baptized by an English missionary, when 
the United States were still colonies of England. 
Mr. Williams, being acquainted with the language, 
customs, and disposition of the Oneidas, had been 
able to interest them in the Prayer Book in their 
own language, and by it to teach them the ritual 
of the Church ; and the Bishop found that they made 
the responses with understanding and chanted the 
hymns with fervor. At the confirmation, the eighty- 
nine prepared by Mr. Williams received the apostolic 
laying-on of hands with grateful humility and shared 
in the Holy Communion with loving devotion. 

In the South as well as in the North, faithful lay- 
men and clergymen were carrying the seed of the 
Church farther and farther west. In Kentucky the 
prayers of the Church were heard long before the 
state had parishes or a diocese. Near the state line 
there stood for many years, upon a plain of fine 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 101 

white clover, a noble elm with large branches ex- 
tending regularly in all directions from its massive 
trunk, making a green circular roof above the greens- 
ward below, where on Sundays some two hundred 
persons used to gather to worship God in this church 
of living emerald, wrought by His hand and called 
the Divine tree. In 1830 Kentucky welcomed 
Bishop Smith, its first Bishop, and afterward Pre- 
siding Bishop of the American Church. 

The pioneer priest of Tennessee was James Otey. 
who was brought to the knowledge of the Church by 
reading the Prayer Book. Going first to the state 
as a teacher, he was moved by the spiritual need of 
the people to combine his ministry with his school- 
work. After a week of hard labor, teaching the whole 
round of primary and academic studies, and prepar- 
ing his sermons by the light of a tallow dip late at 
night, he served two parishes on Sunday, travelling 
between these, eighteen miles, on horseback. In 183^ 
this pioneer priest became the first Bishop of the state. 
and such were his zeal and success that he was soon 
appointed Provisional Bishop of Mississippi and 
Florida, and Missionary Bishop of Arkansas, Louisi- 
ana, and the Indian Territory. Years of continuous 
toil, exposed to the hardships and dangers of long- 
horseback journeys in an unsettled country, broke the 
brave Bishop's health, but in the delirium of sick- 
ness his mind was fixed on his high and holy work, 
and he would pray, "Let me go to the people, they 



102 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

are perishing for the Bread of Life." The Church 
of the great Southwest stands to-day as the memorial 
of this man's devoted labor and the answer to his 
prayers. 

Into the territory of Minnesota, with almost the 
first immigrants from the East, had gone that apos- 
tolic man, who, after founding Nashotah in Wis- 
consin, sought new work in a fresh field and laid 
the foundation of the Church, the schools, the mis- 
sion work among the Indians, and the diocese, which 
are now a witness to the faith and love of James L. 
Breck. The Chaplain at Fort Snelling, the loved 
Father Gear, had already given the first English ser- 
vice in Minnesota, but the real work of the Church 
was not begun until the year 1850, when, on the 
memory day which was the Feast of St. John the 
Baptist, Mr. Breck with three loyal associates organ- 
ized the mission for Minnesota, kneeling together in 
the celebration of the Holy Communion beneath a 
spreading elm, and there offering to God their "body, 
spirit, and soul." There followed long journeys on 
foot and services in the shadow of a great rock on a 
bluff overlooking the Mississippi, in the forest, on the 
prairies, in the rude huts of the settlers, or in school- 
houses. 

In these years the people of the Church in the 
East began to look with anxious thought at the many 
people settling rapidly in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mis- 
souri, and the other states of the Middle West, and to 




REV. JAMES LLOYD BRECK. 
[Pioneer Founder in Wisconsin and Minnesota.] 




BISHOP KEMPER. 
[First Missionary Bishop in the Great Northwest. I 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 103 

see that it depended upon them and their children 
to save America for Christ, and to send out shepherds 
to seek the wandering flocks; and the Church began 
to push westward with the company of immigrants 
and the advancing frontier line. Accordingly, on 
September 25, 1835, the Eev. Jackson Kemper was 
consecrated Bishop for the West and sent out to find 
and lead the ignorant who did not know the name 
of the Lord. The aged Bishop White, the apostle 
of love, had the joy of laying his hands in consecra- 
tion upon this Missionary Bishop, forty-eight years 
after he had received in Lambeth Chapel the apostolic 
gift from the English primate. Bishop Kemper, wise 
and courteous, unwearied in effort and unsparing of 
his strength, went to his great field as a witness for 
Christ and the Church, following the scattered set- 
tlers into the wilderness, and carrying the message 
of the Gospel to the red Indians. 

Thus, as the army of pioneers marched on and 
on to the sunset, with them went loyal sons of the 
Church, planting the seed of the old Faith by the 
rolling rivers and great lakes of the continent, upon 
the almost boundless wheat and corn fields of Kansas 
and Dakota, beyond the snow-crowned mountains of 
Colorado, in the wild mining camps of Idaho and 
Montana and the other states and territories. When 
the discovery of gold drew restless adventurers from 
many lands to California, where law was scarcely 
heeded and everything was swallowed up in the haste 



104 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

to become rich, into the mad excitement was sent the 
first Bishop of that diocese to carry the peace of 
God. On a Sunday in July, 1849, Divine service 
was celebrated in the home of John Merrill in San 
Francisco, and the parish of Holy Trinity was organ- 
ized, and in the same year a church was built. 

Dr. Kip, of Albany, was consecrated Bishop of 
California in Trinity Church, New York, on the 
Feast of SS. Simon and Jude, 1853. After a stormy 
morning, during the Communion service the clouds 
broke, and a gleam of sunshine fell upon the altar; 
one present said that so the Church in California, 
with a beginning of gloom, had the promise that the 
Sun of Bighteousness would shine upon the land 
and bring forth fruit from it. 

In 1851 the Bev. William Bichmond was appoint- 
ed missionary to Oregon; and at his farewell ser- 
vice, in St. Bartholomew's Church in New York, was 
read an ode by Martin Tupper, beginning with these 
words : 

"Push on to earth's extremest verge, 
And plant the Gospel there; 
Till wild Pacific's angry surge 

Is soothed by Christian prayer, 
i^dvance the standard, conquering van, 

And urge the triumph on, 
In zeal for God and love for man. 
To distant Oregon." 

Mr. Bichmond, with the devoted missionaries, St. 
Michael Fackler and John McCarty, a former army 
chaplain, did valiant and self-sacrificing work in their 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 105 

field, travelling widely through the forests and over 
the wide plains of Oregon, Idaho, and Washington. 

In 1866, Bishop Tuttle was sent to the newly- 
formed missionary district of Montana, Idaho, and 
Utah, and we are told that "in the mining country 
of Montana, the simple explanations and loving in- 
vitation of the missionary won people of all Christian 
names to join gladly in that prayer which is com- 
mon to minister and congregation : and the dignity 
of the holy worship of the Church, the strength of 
her historic position, and the power of her Divine na- 
ture rendered her fit to do lasting work for the 
Master." 

Hero-stories might be told of many brave, devoted 
pioneers who patiently and persistently sowed the 
seed of the Church through the western land until. 
in about sixty years from the days when Samuel 
Gunn and the other first missionaries turned their 
faces toward the sunset, the banner of the Lamb had 
been carried across the continent, and the same 
Church, once planted at Jamestown and on the At- 
lantic shores, was also planted where the green, foam- 
crested waves of the Pacific roll up on the western 
coast of the great Republic. 



XII. 

The Missionary Church. 

We have seen how, from the very first, among 
our English forefathers in this land, there were those 
who came here with all their hearts desiring to widen 
the borders of Christ's Church and to carry His Gos- 
pel to those who knew Him not; and we have seen 
how the American Church, as soon as she received the 
apostolic gift and had her own chief shepherds, the 
Bishops, began in her turn to go out into the wilder- 
ness after the wandering sheep of the Good Shep- 
herd, and to do for the new settlements in the ever- 
widening borders something of what had been done 
for her by her benefactor, the venerable Society for 
the Propagation of the Gospel. Soon, also, came the 
desire to the Church to spread the good news in the 
world outside the country, as indeed was necessary, 
for the soul of Christianity is missionary, progressive, 
and world-embracing; and at a meeting held in St. 
James' Church, in Philadelphia, presided over by 
Bishop White, on a memory day, November 21, 1821, 
the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the 
Church was organized. The people of the Church 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 107 

everywhere were deeply interested, and auxiliary so- 
cieties sprang up all over the land. 

In 1822, Ephraim Bacon and his wife were ap- 
pointed catechists to Africa, but they could not find 
a passage to that country, so that they were foreign 
missionaries in will only. A little later, the Eev. 
Xorman Xash was appointed missionary to the In- 
dians at Green Bay, Wis.; and on October 1, 1830, 
the first foreign missionaries sent out by the Ameri- 
can Church set sail for Greece. These were the Bev. 
Dr. Bobertson and his wife, the Bev. Mr. Hill and 
his wife, and Solomon Bingham, a printer. Xext, 
the needs of China were recognized, and the death of 
Augustus Lyde, the first young man who eagerly of- 
fered himself for this field, did perhaps more for 
the cause he loved than his life would have done. 
His early death roused great sympathy throughout 
the Church, and great interest in the land to which 
he had dedicated himself, and in 1834 the Bev. Henry 
Lockwood was appointed missionary to China. 

In organizing the missionary work of the Church, 
Bishop Doane of Xew Jersey did noble service; and 
he and his associates first declared that principle 
which is now one of the missionary watchwords of the 
Church in America. One day, in 1835, when Bishops 
Doane and Mcllvaine and Dr. Milnor, a committee 
of the directors of the Missionary Society, came to- 
gether, Bishop Doane and Dr. Milnor almost at once 
proposed reporting that the Church is the Missionary 



108 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

Society; whereupon Bishop Mcllvaine exclaimed that 
this was the very plan he was going to speak of in 
his sermon that clay. Thus it was that in the Gen- 
eral Convention of 1835, the great Array of the Bap- 
tized was incorporated into the Missionary Army of 
the Church, since, as Bishop Doane showed, this was 
a part of the original constitution of the Church by 
the plan of her Divine Head, and the duty of preach- 
ing the Gospel to every creature was placed on every 
Christian in his baptismal vow. The Board of Mis- 
sions became the agent of the Church; and the Do- 
mestic and Foreign Missionary Committees were the 
two hands reaching out into the world to carry the 
Gospel. Then and there the Church in America 
placed herself before the world as a Missionary 
Church, with her Bishops as apostles, her clergy as 
evangelists, and her baptized members as enlisted 
helpers, to do all in their power to hasten the coming 
of the Kingdom of the King of all nations. 

We should consider briefly the present work of 
this Missionary Church in this year of memory days, 
as we look back to Jamestown and the tiny band of 
worshippers on the margin of the unknown continent, 
where in no other place were heard the words of the 
English Prayer Book, and then at the home Church 
of to-day in her strength and beauty, with great num- 
bers of splendid as well as simple houses of worship, 
schools, colleges, divinity-schools, hospitals, and char- 
itable homes of many kinds for the relief of the poor 




BISHOP GEORGE WASHINGTON DOANE. 

[New Jersey.] 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 109 

and suffering, and her army of Bishops and other 
clergy and baptized lay people, all in a great measure 
the result of the missionary labors of the faithful in 
the days before our day. The Domestic or home mis- 
sion work of the American Church is carried on by 
twenty-one missionary Bishops with about 1,130 
other workers, and for this part of her enterprise the 
Church gave last year more than $?62,000. 

We should have a wonderful sight-seeing tour, if 
for one day we could travel with the sun, and look 
at the home missions of the American Church. We 
might begin our tour among the lovely forests and 
hills of Porto Eico, where the dark-eyed Spanish- 
speaking children would be going through the bright 
flowering thickets to the American schools and 
churches. Then we should fly across the blue sea- 
water to Florida, to see the colored children gathered 
in the schools, and the suffering Indians going from 
their wretched homes in the Everglades to the hospi- 
tal for healing. Then, to the southern hill country, 
where, from many lonely mountain cabins, boys and 
girls, eager to learn, walk long miles to our schools 
and Sunday schools. Then, swiftly toward the West, 
where many earnest men and women are lovingly 
working, sent by the Church to Indian reservations, 
dreary mining camps, desolate sage-brush plains, and 
widely-scattered farm homes on the great prairies. 

On and on we should go, across snow-covered 
mountains, to sail along the glittering glacier-fringed 



110 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

shore of the Pacific northward, to see our little round- 
faced Alaskan wards and the white and Indian pa- 
tients in the hospitals. We should take a peep at our 
missionary toiling cheerily at lonely Point Hope, and 
Bishop Eowe and his brave helpers ministering 
through the grim Alaskan winter, and making the 
people understand "that they are for the Church, the 
Church is for the people, and the people are all who 
fare over the trail." Then we sail out again on the 
Pacific, this time to visit the girls in the Priory 
School in Honolulu among the lovely flowers, and 
the other school children, native, Chinese, and Jap- 
anese ; then on again, to the Philippines, with all the 
varied work that we should like to linger over, the 
work among the English-speaking people, the Chris- 
tian Filipinos, the Chinese, and the pagans. 

Still travelling on with the sun, we should come to 
other mission fields of the American Church, in lands 
over which the flag of the great Republic does not 
float, in districts under the care of nine missionary 
Bishops and hundreds of American and native help- 
ers. In China we might see our brothers and sisters 
of the yellow race gathering in some seventy-five 
places of worship maintained by the American 
Church. We should like to linger in the strange 
walled cities with their thronging multitudes of peo- 
ple, so different in face and dress and customs from 
those whom we generally see; we should like to look 
at the earnest young men of Boone College and St. 





BISHOP BOONE, SR. 
[Pioneer Bishop in China 




BISHOP CHANNING MOORE WILLIAMS 
[Pioneer Bishop in Japan.] 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA 111 

John's University, students of arts and science, of 
medicine and of theology ; and the girls of St. Mary's 
Hall, learning to love study so well that some of them 
are looking forward to further study in America ; and 
the happy little ones in St. Mary's Orphanage; and 
the thoughtful women in the Church Training 
schools, studying the Bible and Prayer Book that they 
may in turn teach these to their own people. We 
should like to see the nearly 25,000 people who in a 
year go for health and healing to St. Luke's Hospital, 
and the other thousands at St. Elizabeth's, St. Peter's, 
St. James', the Elizabeth Bunn, and the various dis- 
pensaries. 

In Japan, with its millions of earnest, intelligent 
people, we should find other groups of schools and 
hospitals; the Divinity school in Tokyo, St. Paul's 
College, St. Margaret's, St. Agnes', and the other 
schools, and Holy Trinity Orphanage. We should 
see Trinity Cathedral, and some eighty-seven places 
where God is worshipped in the prayers and praises 
of the Prayer Book which we love; and we should 
see thousands of sick skilfully cared for in another 
St, Luke's Hospital, and other thousands of out-pa- 
tients, and still other thousands cared for at St. Bar- 
nabas' and St. Peter's. And we should see the cate- 
chists and Bible-women going from house and house 
among the people, and teaching them, one by one. 

Then, travelling over the vast distances of Asia 
and the heart of the dark continent, we should come 



112 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

to the Cape Palmas district, where the African boys 
and girls are gathered in schools, and where the dark- 
skinned men and women are humbly worshipping 
God and serving Him in our sixty-one mission sta- 
tions; while the children of some whom our earliest 
missionaries found in darkest heathenism and bar- 
barism are teaching Christ to their own people. Sail- 
ing away from Africa across the Atlantic, Ave should 
come to other African children in the Sunday schools 
and churches of Haiti. And then we should see Cuba 
with its patient, persevering missionaries minister- 
ing to English-speaking, French-speaking, and Span- 
ish-speaking congregations. Still travelling west, we 
should come again to America, and see the sixty-one 
congregations in care of the Church in Mexico, and 
the beginning work of the Church in the Panama 
Canal Zone ; and south of the equator, we should find 
the great mission field of Brazil, with its numerous 
mission stations, its theological school, and its beau- 
tiful churches built in a large part by the people of 
the land. For in all these foreign lands the Ameri- 
can Church is trying to plant the seed of the old 
Faith and to bring the different peoples within the 
sound of the Good Shepherd's voice. 

We may not thus travel with the sun to see the 
Church at work in many lands, but from month to 
month, in The Spirit of Missions and in the Church 
press, we really do see true pictures of that work 
drawn by the pens of the mission workers, and faith- 



OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA U3 

fully printed by the sun that daily visits every part 
of the missionary field. AVe see also pictures of 
places where work ought to be done, but is not yet; 
and as we see these, we seem to hear the pleading 
call that our Missionary Bishops in the home and 
foreign fields are always hearing and repeating to us, 
the call of many nations, saying by their needs, 
"Come, help us also; for we are yours, and you are 
Gods." 

To the General Convention of 1880 in Xew York 
came the Missionary Bishops from the home and 
foreign fields and the Bishops of the western dioceses 
into which people from many foreign lands were 
pouring, and the Church, stirred by the appeals of 
these devoted and enthusiastic men, awoke to a 
greater desire to become the Church of the people, and 
entered with greater vigor into the work of missions 
and so became a more earnestly living and giving 
Church, and began to grow in every way more rap- 
idly, with added numbers, greater charities, and 
deeper spiritual life. 

The General Convention of 1883, marking the 
end of the hundred years of laying the foundations 
of the Church in America, met in old Christ Church, 
Philadelphia, where the General Convention first took 
form, where the Rev. George Keith, the first mission- 
ary of the S. P. G., preached again and again, draw- 
ing back many to the old Faith, where the noble 
Washington worshipped, and the saintly Bishop 



114 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

White was baptized and ministered as priest and 
Bishop. To that Convention the venerable Bishop 
Clark, of Bhode Island, told the thrilling history of 
the Church in America, and reminded the people 
that this Church, linked to the past by ties that can 
never be broken and in full sympathy with the pres- 
ent, was called to do a greater work than ever before 
in this land and in other lands in the century to 
come, this twentieth century of ours. 

The Church whose foundations were laid by the 
few Englishmen who knelt before God in the James- 
town forest, now covers a territory more than double 
the size of the great Roman Empire, and the faithful 
members of that Church have it for their duty and 
joy to hand on to ages to come the gifts that, given 
to them, have made the Church in America what she 
is to-day. Even so will our dear Church remain a 
Living Church, for it is a law of the Kingdom of 
God that power must not spend itself within, but 
must bear fruit without; the fountain upspringing 
sends its pure, sparkling water away in a clear stream 
to bless other lands. So it has always been in the 
Church, which, like her Divine Master, has gone 
abroad, teaching the ignorant, healing the sick, and 
calling strangers and wanderers home to God ; always 
praying Him to send forth laborers into His harvest, 
and waiting on Him while He gives wisdom and 
courage and the gift of the Holy Spirit, that most ex- 



OF THE CHURCH IX AMERICA 115 

cellent gift of love which has inspired her to become 
a Missionary Church. 

In a special way, this Church is fitted for her 
high calling to go into all lands, since she is quite 
separated from the state, and free to send out Bishops 
at need, while she has in her membership the Anglo- 
Saxon race with its energy and that love of adventure 
which longs to go out into all quarters of the world. 
And because of this high station of the Church in 
America, she has high responsibility, and is called to 
noble self-sacrifice and labor. We are in trust of 
the Gospel for the people of the many nations at 
our doors and in other lands: the white man, the 
black man, the red man, the yellow man, the brown 
man: for nothing is foreign to the Church that be- 
longs to humanity, and that carries on the work of 
Christ who lived in the world and worked for the 
world. Prayers and alms and lives are demanded 
without limit for the missionary work of the Ameri- 
can Church which she sees waiting to be done, as she 
looks from Maine to Florida, from Mexico to Alaska, 
to China, Japan, Africa, South America, and the 
Islands of the sea ; while, at the same time, she looks 
upward and hears the marching orders of her Cap- 
tain, and the Voice from Heaven, saying, "Go for- 
ward." 

Is it not a glorious vocation — this of the apos- 
tolic Church in America, and of all her children: 
this call to go on and on, leading the nation* of the 



110 SOME MEMORY DAYS 

world, to listen to and obey the voice of the Good 
Shepherd; to go on and on, until the many peoples 
shall all be the people of God and of His Christ, and 
the Church Militant of the earth resting from her 
labors, shall be the Church Triumphant in the beauty 
of holiness, still forevermore serving her Lord and 
her God? 



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